Nicholas & Jordana Taylor: First Dance

More to come as I "develop" the pictures I took at their wedding in WV. But I really like this one. Nicholas needs to do a better job shaving for big days like these ;-)

Nanjing Pictures

Full set here.

Nanjing was the capital of several governments of China, including the Taiping and Nationalist goverments. Its name actually means "Southern Capital" (just as Beijing means "Northern Capital".) The city is okay, I guess. There was nothing heart-stoppingly amazing about it, but I had a decent time. I think the main issue was that I wasn't motivated to do a whole hell of a lot, since I was by myself and had roughly 24 hours to spend there (thanks to a train delay).

First I went to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, which commemorates the Japanese slaughter of over 300,000 Nanjing residents in 1937. The exhibits were tastefully done and really gave me a sense of what happened, which is what I wanted it's not an incident we hear much about in the West. But of course it still plays a huge role in Sino-Japanese relations today and, for me as a Jew, has parallels to the Holocaust. There is an excavated mass gravesite you can walk around, and there are various statues, which are done to look very ragged and horrifying, accompanied by poems and prose about that time.

After that I went to the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yatsen, the founder of modern China. The memorial is up on Zijin Mountain (Purple-Gold Mountain) and is a pretty nice place. You have to climb up 392 stairs (some of which are pictured above) to get to his blue-and-white place of rest. You can circle around his body in a manner not unlike the way in which you can view Mao Zedong's body in Beijing. Around his mausoleum are some historical artifacts and facts about the man. Later on I went to the Presidential Palace, which has an interesting history. It's built on the site of a palace constructed as the seat of government for the Taiping rebels (another fascinating story I never learned about in America -- who wants to argue with a man who claims Jesus gave him a new set of internal organs?) In its current form it was the site where Dr. Sun was sworn in as president, and it's where Chiang Kaishek did his thing while he was in power. Pretty neat historical stuff. It's built in the style of a Ming Dynasty palace, with gardens, walkways, and everything. Check out the pictures, they're pretty neat.

At night I went to the Confucius Temple area, which contains a huge night market and is all lit up with neon. There's nothing spectacular about it -- I just have grown to enjoy night markets and neon, so when I heard these two things where there in abundance, I went to eat some snacks and take some pictures. Good times :-) After that I retreated to my hotel room, where I caught Spider-Man 3 (awesome) and Good Luck Chuck (which I thought I was going to hate but, surprisingly, didn't) on HBO before falling asleep.

Another thing I should mention is the train ride I took to/from Nanjing. It was so entirely comfortable that even when we were stuck on the tracks for 45 minutes outside a smaller city, I didn't mind. I just kept reading my book. It was the "first-class" train which means the seats were super wide and I had tons of leg room. Plus the cabin was nice and quiet since the ride wasn't that full. It was very relaxing; I almost didn't want to get off at Nanjing!

Well that's it for travelling in China! It's been a great year. In addition to Shanghai, I've been to Hangzhou, Beijing, Macau, Hong Kong, Huangshan, Zhuji, Shaoxing, Suzhou, Xizang (Tibet), Kunshan, Xi'an, and Nanjing. Wow. I think that's pretty damn impressive for just one year, and I feel really good about all I've been able to do. It's certainly far more travelling than I've done in the States.

My next big trip is ... you guessed it ... back home to America on Friday. Yup -- less than a week!! Can you believe it? I can't really ...

Xi'an Pictures

Here.

Samples:
















And a video of the Terracotta Army to give you an idea of the scale:

Thanks!!

2008 has been, beyond all measures, the most eventful year of my life. So what am I thankful for?

• Seeing lots of incredible places in China, including (but not limited to) the Great Wall and Mt. Everest
  
• Experiencing not only a different culture, but that culture's take on my culture
  
• Experiencing everyday/non-tourist life here -- waking up, getting to work, paying bills, eating dinner, buying clothes, going grocery shopping, walking in the rain, learning the layout of the city, etc.
• Learning a bit of Chinese
• Phreaktion and Void
• 2 kuai zhu rou baozi on the street
• The chance to do something completely different at work
• Staying in touch with friends & family back home
• Sichuan food
• Fried bees, fried scorpions, yak's eyeballs, rabbit, pigeon, duck's blood, spicy duck neck, etc.
• Baseball (the O's notwithstanding)
• The Shelter, Garden Books, LoGo, Thumb Plaza, Taikang Lu, Moganshan Lu, Fuzhou Lu, People's Square, Bonbon, Zhongshan Park, and all the other places in Shanghai that help keep me sane
• Same goes for Big Bamboo in Jing'an
• All the restaurants and their yummy food
• Liang Jian
  
• My Sony DSC H50 and flickr
• My Lenovo T61, wireless router, and Google (Blogger, Gmail, GCal, and most importantly, Reader)
• Facebook, last.fm, and Friendfeed
• My iPod Classic, decent headphones, and iTunes
• HandBrake
• My China co-workers and friends and all the help they've been in making sense of this crazy city
• All the cabbies, barbers, retail workers, watch/bag/DVD salesmen, and others who've complimented my Chinese in one way or another
• Wii!
• The Shanghai transportation system -- seriously, it's really really nice
  
• Books and movies
• Music! Oh wait, I already said iTunes.
• Xiao Xu
  
• My immune system -- it's help up amazingly well over here
• My fleece jacket and scarf (it's cold over here now ...)

There's a lot more that I can't think of at the moment, but this is a pretty good list, I think.

So kids: what are you thankful for?

Tibet Post #3: Mount F**king Everest

Everest wasn't one of my initial big reasons for going to Tibet, but as the trip approached, for some reason it quickly grew in importance. It's so alluring. The chance to visit Base Camp on The Tallest Mountain in the World, at a lofty 5200 m above sea level. That's 17,060 feet for you non-metrically inclined folks -- higher than any point in the continental US. The once-in-a-lifetime chance to take pictures on the roof of the world. And so on and so on.

To get to Mount Everest from Tibet, you need two things. First is an entry permit into Tibet itself. This permit lists the cities you will visit, in order. Second is a permit to visit base camp. Without that permit, you can't even get close. And the process is different if you're a Chinese national vs. an American.

So the morning of our second day in Lhasa, Dan and I were casually conversing with our tour guide, a very nice Tibetan guy, and he happened to mention that we were to get our Everest permits in Shigatse the following day. I'd known that would happen for awhile, so that was fine. Our Chinese compatriot, however, could not -- she would need to get her permit in Lhasa. This development caused me a small amount of stress, since this information was new to me, and we hadn't planned for it in our day's schedule, and, well, I just had no idea how long this would take. On top of that, I was worried by the way our guide just casually mentioned it. I like to have these kinds of things planned up front and don't like the appearance of oh-by-the-way-you-might-not-be-able-to-get-into-Everest in situations like these :-)

Anyway, we got her permit just fine and continued on with our day. It turns out it didn't take very long, but again, the diminished confidence in our travel agency (and morning rush) was unwelcome. That might be part of what led to my somewhat crappy day that day, as I talked about in my last post.

The next day, we drove to Shigatse and arrived there about 45 minutes before the permitting place closed for the day. We sacked out in our hotel and our tour guide went to get our Everest permits. After about an hour of waiting, I called our guide and asked him about the permits. His English isn't the best, but I was definitely able to understand that the answer was "no". However the signal quality wasn't great and I was having trouble understanding him, so I asked him to come back to the hotel. In the meantime I met up with my 3 companions and we began eating dinner in the Nepalese/Indian restaurant attached to the hotel (mmm, yak and potato curry!). 

Our guide still hadn't showed up after about an hour, so I called him again, and he said he was on his way. He arrived along with our driver and began explaining the situation. The problem was this: our travel agency had forgotten to put "Mt. Everest Base Camp" as a destination on our permit. (Remember how I said that the permit lists the cities you'll visit?) So the agency in Shigatse was like "We can't give you an Everest permit; your Tibet permit doesn't say you can get an Everest permit." Talk about frustrating! Here we are, 400 km from Lhasa, tired after 7 hours of driving, some of us sick from the altitude (I'll cover that in a separate post), and looking forward to Everest -- only to be told we can't go!! 

To his credit, the guide acted very quickly. He called the travel agency (which is based in Lhasa, a situaiton that actually worked to our advantage during this whole permit hoo-hah) and arranged for them to fax an updated permit to the Shigatse agency. This, he assured us, would enable us to get our permits the following morning.

I was pretty upset at this development and called the woman who'd arranged our tour, Christina. I told her we were not happy at being made to wait around in Shigatse with so much uncertainty because someone at her agency forgot to put an important destination on an important document. I thanked her and the guide for working so quickly to correct the problem, but you know, even so.

Anyway this setback resulted in about 2 extra hours of waiting around the hotel lobby on the next morning while our guide and driver went to the Shigatse permit place and talked with them. He came back smiling and waving the permits. We were all good!

Out of Shigatse we traveled along the Friendship Highway. We passed the point, marked with a nice sign, that is 5000 km (3,106 miles) from Shanghai's People Square. We ate lunch in Lhatse and made another permit-related (and bathroom-related, although that was difficult given the lack of "bathrooms" in the town) stop in Shegar. A few km out of Shegar, we turned off the Friendship Highway (which is blessedly paved) onto a 100km dirt road that leads straight to Everest. 

Here we started meeting permit checkpoints with increasing frequency. Starting from the beginning of the road, I think we went through four checkpoints to actually get to Base Camp. Some of the checkpoints were just dudes in tents, dressed in camo, blocking the road with a length of pole on a fulcrum and weighted down on the other end with a rock. Keep in mind this is a pretty damn remote area, as the pictures will show.

Anyway the 100 km road is, like I said, all dirt. (Which is why, if you go to Tibet and Everest, be sure to obtain a 4WD vehicle. Land Cruisers are popular.) And the first half of it is up and down a mountain, so again, lots of hairpin zigzag turns that are not a lot of fun given the fact that you've probably got a headache -- an increasingly painful one given that you ascend a mountain, descend it, drive through a valley, and then ascend even higher up to Everest Base Camp all in the span of 2 - 2.5 hours.

Finally we arrived at the Rongbuk Monastery area and encountered another checkpoint. This time, instead of one dude in a tent, it was like eight dudes in 5 tents, one big one and four single-person ones clustered around it. We made a pit stop here before continuing on, in no small part because it was our first chance to really SEE Everest. The monastery is in a valley and you can see clear through to the peak at other end.

Clouds were obscuring the peak at the time, but I was so thrilled to see our goal in sight that I snapped a bunch of pictures anyway. It turns out that I didn't need to be so hasty though, because we had yet another permit snafu.  (This is the third one, if you're counting.) Remember how we were almost denied in Shigatse, but finally got the travel agency to fax us a new permit in order to obtain the Everest permit? Yeah, well, at this point in our travels we got stopped because our Everest permit did not match our original Tibet permit. Someone forgot to tell these guys that we were allowed on through!

We waited and waited, stuck inside the Land Cruiser outside the checkpoint tent, freezing cold (it was about 7:30 PM now, the sun was going down) and dealing with headaches and being generally frustrated that we were SO CLOSE to our goal but were stopped by yet another travel agency screw-up. 

What I thought would be a quick five-minute discussion turned out to be about a two-hour wait. We watched our travel guide and driver disappear into the tent to talk to people, re-emerge on cell phones, vanish again, and so on. We had no idea what was happening or what our status was. When our driver came back to the truck to get a cigarette, he told us the chances of us gaining entry weren't looking good.

At some point I got outside the truck and went to the bathroom in a nearby port-o-pot. By this point we'd been waiting for like an hour and a half. On my way back, instead of getting inside the truck, I put on my gloves, pulled up my hood, and stood outside the checkpoint tent. I didn't say anything; I just stood there shivering in the cold. I just wanted these checkpoint people to know that we were damn serious about going to Everest. I wanted them to see it on my face and see the determination I had just to stand there in the cold, outside the tent, listening to them decide our fates. More than that I wanted to remind them that the people they were talking about were here, waiting and listening, in the flesh, not just abstract concepts. I wanted to present them with the consequences of their decisions full-on. 

Whether or not any of these high-minded ideals had any effect on the ultimate decision is, of course, something I will never know. But the fact remains that after I'd been out there for 10 minutes, a police car pulled up and a guy got out who was obviously in charge, because he began talking directly and forcefully to our guide. He spoke too quickly for me to understand much of anything. Then he went inside the tent, and our guide came out again, on his cell phone. The driver was with him, so I asked him how things were going. 

I used Chinese because 1) our driver doesn't understand English and 2) I wanted the boss-guy (老板 or laoban) to see that this lao wai wasn't a doofus and could speak some Chinese. I thought about addressing and appealing to the laoban directly, but I decided against it. These were military people, and in the extremely hierarchical Chinese culture no less.  Better to speak only when spoken to. Plus, my Chinese isn't that good. 

Add to this now that the sun is setting over Everest, which is BEAUTIFUL, but my friends in the car are distraught that the clouds still are covering the peak. Every so often the clouds will waft a certain way and we'll catch a glimpse of the peak; someone will shout "PEAK! PEAK!!" and you'll hear cameras clicking for a minute. I tried my best to act dignified in front of the laoban and the other army guys, but then I was like, well, what if THIS is the closest we get?? So I broke out my camera and started snapping away. Then the sun hit the peak and the peak glowed orange and we all oohed and aahed. 

You would too, trust me.

Anyway the laoban heard me speak and said to me what most Chinese people say when they hear me speak (*dusts knuckles on shirt*) which is something along the lines of "Your Chinese is very good!" He even said "Very good!" in English. So I thanked him, told him I was American (although he no doubt knew that from looking at our permits) and that I'd been living in Shanghai for nine months. I made some chit-chat about the weather too; he agreed it was too cloudy and said that yesterday it had been better. (And in my mind I said something along the lines of "Thanks for the information, dickhead.")

Again -- I make no claims as to whether any of this had an effect on us getting past the checkpoint. I never found out the reason everything got cleared up, nor do I much care :-) But we'd been waiting there for two hours and I was desperate. And after chatting with the laoban for a minute, he said something and the party began to break up and everyone began to disperse. This time when I asked our driver: "Keyi fang ma?" Can we enter? He smiled and said "Keyi." 

Yes. We could go to base camp.

By that time it was around 9 or 9:30 PM and dark. We drove about half a mile stumbled out of the Land Cruiser. We'd arrived at, well, I'll call it Tent City. It's the floor of a valley just a short ways from Everest in which many entrepreneurs have set up tent hotels. Each tent fits 5 - 6 people comfortably, has enough room for someone like me to stand, walk, and move around comfortably, is amazingly decorated with rugs and paintings, and comes equipped with numerous blankets and pillows, a fire, a stove over said fire, and a dedicated staff to serve you all kinds of food and drink, anything from instant noodles and root beer to fried rice and stew with sheep's meat. It was about the size of the living room at my parents' house. By gum, we're roughin' it now!!

Dan and I entered the place and were in heaven. After the two-hour wait we just endured, any freakin' thing short of an Iron Maiden would have been a great place to sleep, but luckily this place was way nicer than that :-) We flopped down on the quilt-covered benches while the others piled on in.

We spent the rest of the evening eating fresh-cooked dinner, drinking DELICIOUS sweet tea, and hopping outside to try and take long-exposure pictures of the stars, which were twinkling in the night sky. Unfortunately the pics didn't come out all THAT well, but it was fun nonetheless to explain my tripod and some of the camera settings (shutter speed, aperture size, etc.) to the tour guide in the dark. I put on my hat, gloves, one of my wool sweaters, and two fleece jackets. 

I don't know when we went to bed, but it must have been around 11 or midnight or so. The hotel "staff" swaddled us all in blankets and LITERALLY tucked us in. That was great. I had a real tough time sleeping that night. Consider two things: 1) it's below freezing in the tent (the fire had gone out) and 2) you're 17,000 feet above sea level. I slept for about an hour or so but then I snapped awake and couldn't get back to sleep. I had trouble slowing down my breathing enough for sleep to come. It was very irritating, lying there in the dark, not even tired, bored out of my mind, and breathing somewhat shallowly. I mean, I was comfortable, warm even, I just couldn't sleep.

Others of our group were not so lucky. In the middle of the night, some of us had trouble breathing due to the aforementioned cold and altitude. It didn't sound serious, but you know, that's a scary feeling especially when you're so far away from home :-) So a little before 4 AM we all got up and made a big to-do about relighting the fire, clearing the smoke out (we'd forgotten to cover the stove w/the metal pot), gathering firewood out back where it was stored, etc. I think we were up for close to an hour. It was fun in a camaraderie-like way, although I wasn't the one having trouble breathing, so don't take my word for it :-)

All told I probably got about two hours of unconnected, very shallow sleep. Which sucked, but in the morning, I didn't care, because we saw the sun peek and rise over Mount Everest around 7:30 / 8 AM (the sun rises late in these parts). And it was just fucking gorgeous. Crystal-clear weather. Headache be damned, I scrambled around on the rocky floor of the valley taking picture after picture (after picture after picture). It hurt but it was worth it. 

After awhile I noticed that my toes were hurting. They were freezing! I started getting mildly worried about frostbite, a distinct possibility (or so I imagined; I don't really know). It was comforting that my toes hurt; that meant I could feel them and thus they were still receiving blood. Still, for about 30 solid minutes, those little piggies went all the way home. I wiggled my toes for dear life, and this was after I stepped inside the tent, ate a nice breakfast of fried rice & eggs, added two layers of wool socks, and set my feet up near the fire. In fact I set my feet so close to the fire that I accidentally cooked my shoes for a little bit :-)

Some of our troupe were still not having the best time. The cold and altitude don't just go away, you know, especially if you haven't had much sleep. They were sick. One threw up outside the tent. Luckily all I had was a splitting headache that throbbed every time I moved, and some formerly-frozen-but-now-warm toes. I could deal with those ailments just fine.

About 10:30 AM we motored on up to base camp. The sick members of our troupe had to be convinced, because they were feeling extra-shitty. But it's like, you know, I know you're not comfortable and you're sick and whatnot. And I respect if you want to not sit in a car for the 10-minute drive to base camp. You can get great views of Everest down in the valley. But this is what we came all the way here for!!C'mon guys!! You're not really thinking about NOT going to base camp are you?!? Okay I didn't put it like that, they didn't need THAT much convincing, but still :-)

Anyway we drove up to base camp and passed through one FINAL checkpoint. I was sweating bullets that we were going to have yet MORE permit problems, but luckily those fears were unfounded, and we were waved on through. I was underwhelmed by the area. There's like 4 - 5 low-slung, garage-type buildings where I guess the Chinese guards there live, and a couple tents too. There's also a sign commemorating the place.

But when you walk over the small hill in the distance, you see frigging BASE CAMP. All it is is a vast expanse of rocky ground on which expeditions make, well, camp. There's no need for permanent structures because the expeditions bring everything with them up the mountain. And beyond base camp is, well, the peak. Again, the weather was gorgeous. Clear unobstructed view. And you're at the foot of the tallest mountain in the world. 

I'll shut up now and let you see what I saw.

Nothing else much really matters after that. We chatted with some cyclists who'd rode there from Lhasa (talk about insane). I called my parents and said hello, and then we left, went back to the tent to pick up our belongings, and started the long, terrible drive back to Shigatse.

Tibet Post #2: Norbulingka and Sunsets

Our second day in Lhasa was my least favorite. That's because I was struggling a bit from the altitude, I think, my adrenaline high at having survived two days on a train and one in Lhasa was wearing off, and my stomach hurt, and I just felt pretty shitty overall. (Hey, I never said it was a vacation!) Top that off with a morning spent walking around Norbulingka, which isn't the world's most exciting scenic area, although there is a lot of history in there, like the first radio in Tibet, and the first western toilets and chairs. Man, that Dalai Lama knows how to party!! And, um, arrange flowers.

Full set here.

After that we went to the Tibet Museum, which was pretty dang neat but, had I been more awake, might have been elevated to the status of fascinating. 

After the museum, we at lunch, where I ate yak eyeball.  (Yes, really). Then we walked around the Sera Monastery for a little while. That was fun and very nice, but again, I was dragging ass by that point (having eaten too much for lunch and fallen into a small food coma. Maybe yak eyeballs are used as sleep aids in Tibet.). I have a lot of pics from Sera, but I haven't uploaded them yet; you'll have to wait for later :-)

Now rewind one day to the first day we got to Lhasa. After we'd finished sightseeing for the day, I brought my tripod out to Potala Square (across the street from the palace) at the center of town. I was struck by the layout of the square because it is exactly the same as Tiananmen Square, except with the Potala Palace at the north end instead of the Forbidden City, crossing Beijing Lu instead of Chang'an Dong Dajie, with some other monument at the south end instead of the Monument to the People's heroes. Interesting. Anyway, Dan and I stayed there for quite awhile, and I took some amazing sunset pics:

You can see that the sun was setting behind a hill with a communications tower on it ... Dan and I made endless fun of this fact, as if the silhouette of a communications tower has some mystical beauty in it ... when really it's probably a crass symbol of modernity. But its proximity did enable me to call Tim and Laurel, our friends in town for a grueling bike ride from Lhasa to Kathmandu, and set up dinner. Hm, paradoxes.

Tibet Post #1: Yamdrok-Tso Lake

The pics will come in installments as I find the time to sort, tag, title, describe, and upload them. Here's a couple from the first batch, taken at Yamdrok-Tso lake, a couple hours' drive out of Lhasa on Gangbala Mountain. 

This was our first scenic stop out of Lhasa and it was breathtaking, both figureatively and literally. To get to the lake, you climb from 3700m (Lhasa's altitude) to 4700m (15,419 feet). This means driving up the side of Gangbala Mountain, which takes about half an hour to 45 minutes and involves tons of curvy roads and hairpin turns that throw you from one side of the car to the other. As the altimeter in our Land Cruiser climbed higher, I began getting a headache from the thinning of the air. Also, my abs began to hurt as I inadvertently kept clenching them to avoid falling too far to either side (and smushing Kitty and Charles into their door).

We kept seeing the snowline getting closer and closer, and the anticipation was building because we knew that we'd be seeing something amazing. And we were right. As you clear the summit of the mountain, the view of the top is replaced by the lake:

In what quickly became a recurring theme for the trip, the weather was freezing cold and the altitude was giving me a headache, but the view was so stunning that I ran around in circles taking pictures anyway. Which means I quickly ran out of breath and was gasping a bit as I got back into the car :-)







After a little while at the top, we drove down to the shore to take a closer look:







The one above is probably my favorite.

The full set is here and includes a picture of me on a yak :-)

Back in Shangers

Oh man, Tibet was amazing. Everything was fantastic, but the highlight was seeing Mount Everest bright and clear in the crisp morning sun. Just beautiful.

Of course I'll do a full blog post(s) on the trip later, and there are ~1200 pics to sort through and post.

Reporting for Duty, Sir

Guess who got a frigging JURY SUMMONS the day before he leaves for Tibet? And, um, three months before he'll even set foot in the US?

I'll give you a hint - I see him every time I look in the mirror. Hah.

This should be fun.

Got the Train Tickets to Lhasa

Just got word today that we got the tickets for the two-day train ride (!!!!!!) from Shanghai to Lhasa. I'm just hoping they'll let us out at Xining to stretch our legs a bit.

I've been told that I will not fit on the sleeper beds in the train. I've also been told to bring a roll or two of toilet paper.

I bought an extra memory card for my camera. I also bought some warmer layers to put on top of the sweaters and fleece that I already have.

We leave Sunday night at 8 PM. Arrive Lhasa at 9 PM Tuesday. We'll be back in Shanghai on the 8th.  

Plenty of pictures to come, I promise :-)

What I Really Miss About Being in the US ...

... is the ability to sing in the car.

Ya just can't do that in the backseat of a cab or on the subway or walking down the street.

Maybe that's why karaoke is so popular in Shanghai?

Pictures from Zhuji/Wuxie and Shaoxing are up. Some heavy nature photography in the Wuxie set!!

The Zen of Dusty Baker

"Everybody knows [Micah Owings] can hit," Reds manager Dusty Baker said. "If anybody knows he can hit, they know he can hit."

-ESPN

Let me be the first to say: What??

In other news, the Orioles have mathematically guaranteed their 11th straight losing season. They will finish last place in the AL East for the first time since 1988. Damn you for getting good all of a sudden, Rays.

I was really shocked to find out that David Foster Wallace committed suicide. On a complete whim back in April, I ended up purchasing his book Consider the Lobster at Garden Books in Shanghai. I specifically remember reading the titular essay while sitting on a bench at Fuxing Park, and another one in which he reviews a dictionary (wow, nerdness alert), while waiting to pick my parents up at Pudong Airport. I was hooked instantly and ended up buying another book of his, well, one that he edited, anyway.

Just got back from a fun little trip to Wuxie and Shaoxing. Pics are going up as we speak -- err, as I type. If you are wondering where your socks are made, I would bet that Zhuji (the city near Wuxie) is the answer, as I saw numerous sock factories along the road. That makes for some gripping tourism, I assure you.

Travel, Shmavel

Once I decided I wanted to visit Tibet over the October holiday, and once I convinced 3 other people to come with me, it was only a matter of 50 or so emails before we had the plans settled. There are numerous ways to get to Tibet; chief among them being, in my opinion, the world's highest train. I was itching to have this experience, so in planning how we made it, I insisted that we take the train either in or out of Lhasa. Luckily for me, no one had a huge problem with that mode of transport. 

Why so many emails? Because the devil is in the details: 

• Getting to Lhasa requires a permit separate from a Chinese visa
• Only travel agencies can get that permit for you
• You need your passport and visa to get this permit; two of my friends still need to get their residence permits
• You must specify your city of departure
• Your whole group must arrive together
  
• We're travelling during a week-long national holiday, which means we'll be travelling with 人山人海, literally (ren shan ren hai, "a mountain of people, a sea of people") so there was immense pressure to book the trip ASAP
• Train tickets go on sale only 5 days before the departure date; it's tough to reserve them in advance like you can for a plane
• Our travel agency is based in Lhasa, so it's easier for them to get the train tickets going from Lhasa -> Shanghai, and that is preferable for numerous reasons
• The Lhasa -> Shanghai train takes two days and leaves only on odd days (e.g. Oct 5th, 7th, 9th, etc.)
• You can fly from Shanghai to Lhasa through Xi'an, or you can fly from Shanghai to Xining and take the train from there, and then return by flying from Lhasa to Shanghai, or any combination of the three
• Some people were less than thrilled with the idea of the train and/or wanted to take it into Lhasa, whereas some of us wanted to take it out of Lhasa
• We're a consensus-oriented bunch, which mean we all want to make sure everyone's okay with the plan of action
  

But eventually, we determined the plan. Sunday Sept 28th, we'll take the train from Shanghai to Lhasa. We'll arrive on the evening of Sept 30th. We'll spend several days in Tibet, then on Oct 7th we'll fly from Lhasa to Shanghai, thus ending the trip. 

At least, that's the plan right now :-) We still have to determine our itinerary, which should be okay since we all agree that spending a night at Mt. Everest Base Camp is of prime importance, and we're on a private tour so we can do pretty much whatever we want, whenever we want. The travel agent built this into our next-to-last day and gave us numerous suggestions for other sights, so we should be fine. I don't really care what we see; I will just be happy to be there. (As long as I don't hallucinate too much from altitude sickness. My friend Cameron was telling me today about his AMS in Sichuan province, which borders Tibet. It sounded pretty crappy. His bout involved headaches, shortness of breath on even the mildest of inclines, lethargy, trouble sleeping, and a mild hallucination that someone was crawling around on the floor of his room at night. WOW. I am thankful that we are getting a driver and not relying on hiking.)

This will probably be my last "big trip" in China. I think after Tibet, I might be content with smaller excursions, like to Xitang and Putuoshan. But who knows? Never say never.

Oh -- check out the care package my parents sent me!!  Thanks guys!! :-) 

Q: Why Climb Mount Everest?

A: Because (I will be) there.

A Break-In

Not really, but yesterday evening I was playing Wii when my doorbell rang. Because I wasn't expecting anybody, I assumed it was another wrong delivery, like what happened last time. But no, it was three people: a middle-aged man and woman and an older woman. Immediately the three of them started yammering away (in Chinese, of course) at 100 mph. I, being a) a lao wai and b) perplexed by having three strangers show up at my front door, stared at them blankly until my brain revved into gear enough to understand what they were saying. Apparently the guy's co-worker was coming in from somewhere, Britain I think, after having spent some time in HK, and he was going to be working in the Lujiazui district in Shanghai. This threesome were scouting apartments in the area (the woman in the lead was the agent, I think) and were looking at a place on the 22nd floor of my building. However the person wasn't there, so they came to my place to see if they could see how the apartments are laid out.

Not feeling very threatened by this trio, I let them in and they began sniffing around my place (and imparting the above information to me). They were pretty efficient about it but seemed surprised that my place only had one bathroom (I guess the place on the 22nd floor has, or is supposed to have, two).

Anyway it was funny, mainly because it was completely unexpected and they were all talking at warp speed while puttering around my apartment. But the best part was when I was seeing them to the door, the agent scolded me for walking around my apartment barefoot. She said I would get sick. I just thought that was funny, being mothered by a Chinese leasing agent :-)

For those of you who haven't seen my Huangshan pics, I highly suggest you do so now. There are some pretty dang memorable shots in there, if I do say so myself. (And, not being able to say it any other way -- that's how I'm going to say it.) You also may be interested in the Hong Kong and Macau sets.

I'm planning more travel soon, so stay tuned!

Exhausted But Amazed

Man, whenever I come back from a vacation, or any length of time without the Internet, I've got like 6,000 things to catch up on in my RSS reader. It's a tad overwhelming. I should probably just mark them all as read and move on with it.

Huangshan was amazing. On the first day, we climbed about 7 miles worth of stairs. It HURT. Just imagine that. SEVEN MILES. of STAIRS. OUCH. But it was worth it, for we got amazing photos of the North Sea and West Sea, so named because of the clouds that roll in and out. The rest of the time, it was rainy and misty and terrible.

There are so many other things I could write about, and I might when I have time. But now I am exhausted and waiting for the pictures to upload to flickr. Let me just say that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness nature on such a grand scale. Looking at the vast gouges of jagged earth and roiling tendrils of mist that compose 北海 and 西海, I felt time stop. Seeing those peaks and valleys was worth every sore calf muscle, every overpriced bottle of water, every bug squashed in the hotel room, and every ragged gasp of wheezing breath I just barely managed to exhale as I willed myself to put one foot in front of the other ... just ... one ... more ... time while hobbling up that accursed set of stairs.

Seven miles. And that was just the ascent. It was another seven down, and that's only because we took a cable car partway. There are people who do that ascent and descent twice a day, with loads of hotels' dirty laundry, bottled drinks, and other sundries on their backs. I don't ever want to hear you complain about your day job again.

The pictures should finish uploading in an hour or two, so go check them out. I might post some of my favorites here on the blog. But just know this -- the pictures cannot do the view justice. Everything felt so sharp and clear and in-focus. A picture just doesn't capture the awe-inspiring majesty of looking at those peaks in person. I could have sat there for hours, and I probably would have if the mist hadn't rolled back in. It's amazing. It takes literally 15 seconds for the entire valley to empty out of, or fill up with, an opaque white cloud that kills all sightseeing opportunities. People run from one viewing platform to another, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rock walls that have been obscured for their entire visit. I feel very lucky to have gotten the time and views I did, although there were plenty of other times during the trek where I was frustrated because the mist was blocking a view. It's like, "I know there's something beautiful out there, but I can't see it, dammit!" That's frustrating.

Tourism trips improve my Chinese. I would pass small children with their families and hear them say "... lao wai ..." or "... wai guo ren ..." and then I would say (in Chinese) "Lao wai? Where? I'm not a lao wai! I'm Chinese!" I love hearing them gasp and laugh when I answered them. Unfortunately from then on it was downhill as they would continue the conversation and, more often than not, I would not understand them, haha. But it was still fun.

I met Walnut Lady while taking a picture on the descent to the Hot Springs. She was with her grandson and they were meeting up with the rest of their family. I used my new Chinese phrase "Ladies first" to tell her to go ahead of me while I stopped and took a picture. We got to talking and I managed to do pretty well. Then she said goodbye as she went down the stairs. I saw her again on the shuttle to the main gate, and she waved and smiled. Then I ran into her and her family in Tunxi, and she was so excited. She kept saying something that I couldn't understand -- and nobody with her knew how to translate into English. So I politely said goodbye again. Then, because Tunxi is a stultifying labyrinth of boredom, I ran into her again like 20 minutes later. She tried again, to the amusement of nearby shopkeepers and 7 or 8 passerby who found it interesting to watch a 老人 converse with a smiling but not-understanding 外国人, to say something to me. No go. But Herbert remembered the Chinese phrase, and when we found Charles and Kitty again, we asked her what it meant. "Walnut", she said. So we're assuming that this lady wanted me to buy her a walnut, or vice versa. Thus the Walnut Lady (核桃女) was born. That's how these things happen. I shoulda got a picture with her.

Okay, so, no travelling for at least 2 weeks. Okay? Okay. I'm exhausted. And flickr seems to be borking out again. Boo.

The Olympics, The Number 8, and Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda has taken China by storm. Seriously. Everyone I talk to says it's the best China-related movie they've seen, even counting Chinese movies. Everyone feels that it really portrays Chinese culture and society very accurately. Themes in the movie are traditional themes from Chinese life. And it's just a well-done film. Citizens are now pointing fingers at Chinese moviemakers and saying things like "Why can't you make a movie this good! You're Chinese, for Pete's sake!" (Okay they probably don't use that idiom.) They're amazed that Americans could do this good of a job. (As am I!)

I've seen it twice myself and think it's really good. But from my point of view I was like "Oh this is terrible, so stereotypical China, with the pagodas and the martial arts and the mysticism and the dragons and the animal characters and what have you. I can't believe Americans have the nerve to put this stuff out." So elitist. But it turns out that these stereotypes are accepted and embraced by native Chinese, as detailed above. So does that mean they're really stereotypes? After all, that word has a pejorative connotation.

Sooo many interesting things going on there.

***

After years of hype and speculation, the 2008 Beijing Olympic games are finally upon us. The opening ceremony is tonight at 8 PM. For those who don't know, 8 is a lucky number in Chinese culture. Its pronunciation (ba) sounds like another character (fa) which means to get rich, to be prosperous. That's why the most prominent buildings have 8s in their addresses. The Jin Mao Tower is at 88 Century Ave. The glitzy Radisson New World hotel is at 88 Nanjing Xi Lu. The more 8s your phone number has, the more money you will pay for that SIM card. The hotel that my relatives are staying at has a phone number that ends in 8888. I shudder to think what they must have paid for that.

Thus it was inevitable that the Chinese would bid for the games in the summer of 2008. Not only that, because of the year, but because the summer games start in August, the 8th month. And it's beginning on Friday the 8th. Starting at 8 PM.

The Olympics will start on 8/8/08 at 8:08 PM. This is not an accident.

The Games are China's coming-out party. The unveiling. The dropping of all pretense that China is still the China of the past 150 years, the China of the Opium Wars and concessions to foreign governments and the fall of dynasties. China is using the Games say to the world "We are a new world power; before this century is out, we will be the world power. Recognize us. Accept us. Our prominence is inevitable."

It's not in a threatening way. It's not in an intimidating way. It's in a factual way. 1.3 billion people. An economy with a double-digit annual growth rate. Cars. Oil. Internet. Cell phones. Plastic packaging. More skyscrapers in Shanghai than on the entire West Coast of the US. A projected population in this city alone of 40 - 60 million during the next century. If so many people still have an image of China as a backwater, they will soon drop it in favor of the glitz and modernity, the glamour and pomp, that the games will showcase.

At least, that is the hope of the Chinese government, that the world will recognize it must come to terms with what's going on over here. That the US no longer will stand as the world's unquestioned superpower. It can't. There's no way. 300 million people? Pshaw. That's nothing. A drop in the bucket. That isn't even enough people to ensure the quality of the English language. Yes, our standard of living is higher. But it won't be for long. It can't be, given the trajectories of both economies. This isn't malicious or spiteful or aggressive. Again -- it's just a fact: death, taxes, and China has a shitload of people who collectively will soon wield unheralded economic influence.

This isn't the decline of Western civilization. It's important that nobody see if this way. Because that line of thinking lends itself towards grasping, clutching, clawing attempts to hang on to perceived place in the world. That line of thinking leads to violence, which is a nothing more than an outward manifestation of deep-seated insecurity and other fears. We're better than that.

Rather, it is the rise of Eastern civilization, which was well on its way at the turn of the century but was derailed by WWII (as was much of the world outside the US). In the modern age, this rise started 30 years ago with Deng Xiaoping opening up the Chinese economy to foreign investment and a capitalist way of thought. That's why he's revered here. But in another sense, it really starts tonight. Tonight, the world will begin to see what the Chinese have known for quite awhile now. And you can even watch it on TV. How post-modern.

***

Here in Shangers, we feel the Olympics personally. One of my favorite music venues has been shut down until the games are over, actually, until September 6th. (The music will simply move to another venue.) People's flights (including mine to Macau!) are being randomly canceled or moved. I would not even want to THINK about flying to Beijing for the next two weeks. It will be bad enough flying to Macau and Tunxi. Restaurants and other venues near the Shanghai Stadium, which is hosting the soccer portion of the Olympics, also have been shut down. I see uniformed police officers much more than before, especially in the metro and along well-traveled streets like Huaihai Zhong Lu and Hengshan Lu. If you're carrying a large bag or package, expect to be searched as you enter the metro turnstile. And don't even think about shopping at any of Shanghai's 1,080 metro station stores. They're closed for a month. People are acting up. There was an attack in Xinjiang last week, and there was some nutcase with a knife out on Nanjing Dong Lu.

Here's hoping we all get through the craziness of August in one piece.

Globetrottin'

Just booked the travel arrangements for 澳门 (Aòmén, "Doorway to the sea", Macau). While I will get to do some tourism there, the main reason I'm going is to finally catch up with Jen, after a near-miss in Beijing and and her unexpectedly-long stay in America. I'll also get to see The Sound of Music, which is great because I've never seen it before.

So weekends in August already are pretty full. The 8th - 9th I'll be entertaining my dad's cousin Bennett and his family who will be visiting Shanghai en route to the Olympics. On the 15th - 17th I'll be in Macau. And from the 22nd - 24th I'll be in Huangshan.

Can't wait to see where I go the rest of my time here :-)

Lots of expats are making noise about the new Batman movie. Everyone keeps saying how good Heath Ledger is as The Joker. But the main topic is that it's not being shown in theaters here, unlike Hancock which a bunch of my friends saw. (I wonder how many scenes were edited out though.) People are saying it's something you have to see in the theaters, which rules out one popular option for watching movies. Some people are even talking about making a trip to Hong Kong specifically to see the movie. Sheesh. It can't be that good -- can it?

I ate dinner last night with 9 other people. Our total bill? About 250 RMB (~$36), or 25 RMB per person. The food wasn't stellar, but it was good Sichuan cuisine, and at $3.60, a definite friggin' bargain. It made the 480-RMB-for-three-people dinner I had tonight seem like I was giving away a kidney or something, espeically since the food was relatively worse than yesterday's (even though we got a boat of sushi, woohoo!)

Ummm and I got a wireless router, so I can 上网 (shàngwǎng, "surf the Internet") from my sofa. That's pretty kickass, if I say so myself. I got it at Best Buy, so I probably paid like 3x what I should have, but I know it's quality first-brand material and I can return it if it explodes or something like that.

An Ode

Okay, not really. As I was wrapping up my American life in November / December I realized that bringing 100+ CDs with me to Shanghai was impractical. The CD case is pretty large and heavy. Not only that, as I didn't have a portable CD player and didn't feel like buying one, the option would leave me tuneless for the 14-hour plane ride (which was still a scary mystery at that point). But mainly it was the thought of keeping track of many small physical objects in the course of moving to, and living in, China.

So I bought an 80 GB iPod and ripped most of my CD collection to MP3. Of course the first iPod came out in 2001, 7 years ago, but I'd not bought one (or any MP3 player) up until that point. The reason was that I had a CD player everywhere I wanted to listen to music. All my music needs were met with CDs.

But the iPod has changed all that. It's perfect for me in so many ways. I commence now with a numbered list for your organizational enjoyment:

1. It holds my entire music collection with room for tons more. Right now I have 1,469 songs or 11.34 gigs of music loaded on there, enough for almost 6 days of non-repeat playtime. I can duplicate that 7 times over ...
2. ... but not really, since it also stores video, and I many episode of TV shows on there. Videos are handy for the plane rides and when I got a divorce that one time.
   
3. No physical media to mess with. No jewel cases and liner notes to buy and then discard. CDs to get lost or broken or stolen. And if my iPod gets lost or broken or stolen, I can just buy a new one, since my media collection is duplicated on my laptop. (If my laptop gets lost or broken or stolen, my media's backed up to an external hard drive.)
   
4. Using iTunes (and Amazon for DRM-free stuff) to buy music means I don't have to worry about finding an American CD store in Shanghai (or anywhere else I happen to travel).
5. It's small and fits in my pocket.
6. It gets near constant use every day in Shanghai as I move about the city. Especially on boring metro rides or long walks home from work. The battery is good for almost a full day of music. From the number of people I see wearing earbuds, I'm not the only one.
   

So I'm done with CDs. When I go back to the States and buy a car, I'm going to get one with a line-in on the stereo so I can just use my iPod. Ditto with any sort of home stereo I buy.

Chunky Air

I'm not sure if the following observation is a consequence of living in a big city, living in China, or some unholy combination of both factors. But some places in this city really stink. And I don't mean "stink" as in "are not fun or enjoyable". I mean stink as in "What the fuck died here, did it poop everywhere while doing so, and how long have the remains been lying around?"

For instance, the corner of Dingxiang and Changliu, just outside my apartment complex, routinely smells like butt. (Strangely enough, Dingxiang means "Fragrant flower.") I'm not sure what it is, but I've never felt the urge to investigate, and so it remains a mystery (that I actively try to avoid). And there are many times walking around the city that you'll accidentally get a whiff of something rotten, foul, or just plain nasty. (I'm not even talking about stinky tofu here, but smelling that in certain places doesn't really help things. There used to be a stall that sold it outside the Zhangjiang Gao Ke metro station, which meant my olfactory senses were bludgeoned repeatedly every single day after work, but I don't smell it there anymore, which either means the stall closed or my nasal receptors have shrivelled up and died, but I don't think the latter is the case, because I smelled it in the Yu yuan area about three weeks ago and, unfortunately, the scent came through just fine.) But really I'm making this post because I exited the Pudong airport yesterday at the ground level, looking for a taxi after my flight back. As I stepped outside, I was greeted with two unpleasant sensations:

1. The intense humidity making it feel like I was swimming in vat of lukewarm Jello
2. The overpowering smell of poop

For #2 there, I mean it literally smelled like poop, which, if you're me, and you've just finished over 24 hours of solid travelling, particularly from a city with clear blue skies and (relatively) fresh air, and the last 13 hours of that travelling was spent drifting in and out of consciousness on a metal tube hurtling through the sky at 550 miles an hour, and you're not looking forward to jet lag, and a cab driver has just attempted to take advantage of your whiteness by overcharging you up front for the trip to your house (of course I told him to take a hike) -- is just like the icing on the cake.

A really stinky cake.

Whence did this foul odor originate? I have no idea. And it because the stench permeated the cab stand area, I had no choice but to ride it out while I waited. (I didn't want to haul my luggage into and off of the MagLev.) Luckily I have learned to vent my frustrations (perhaps an unfortunate choice of words there, but there is no pun intended, I assure you) by learning how to say "Too smelly!" in Chinese: Tai chou le.

For those readers whom I convinced to visit me, well, I hope this doesn't dissuade you. Just be aware.

I will say that flying China Eastern airlines was great. They gave us really good food and were very nice. Because I was like the 4th person to check in (yay for 4-hour layovers at LAX) I got to sit in the exit row, which meant extended leg room on the A380 they used for the flight. The flight was not full - several people spent the whole flight supine across the six seats in the middle aisle. Lucky.

I read (it's now standard for me to start and finish an entire book in one flight), listened to some music, talked to my seat-mate a bit, and watched a movie whose only saving grace was the presence of John C. McGinley, which meant it was easy to pretend like I was watching Scrubs. Actually I lie, it was also fun to ponder the irony and sociological implications of one of gangsta rap's originators acting in a derivative suburban family comedy.

It's 7:30 AM and it's really muggy in my apartment. Because I don't have central A/C, only the unit in my bedroom is on. When I open the door, it's like diving into a bowl of tomato soup. Yes, the air feels chunky.

Delicious.