A Couple of Cloudy Days

Happy 2012!  It's been a while, but I do have a ridiculous number of pictures in tow... so I will probably soon create a large quantity of new posts and backdate them appropriately.  In recent times, I started interviewing for jobs, my parents and sister visited Beijing, I had finals, and began my January travels.  Quite surprisingly, I had absolutely no trouble with transportation this time around.  The two times of year where travel in China is most difficult (specifically train travel) are October Holiday, which I experienced to the fullest with my trip to Xi'an, and around the Chinese New Year, which this year, happens to fall on January 23rd.  Basically, something like over 120 million Chinese people travel home for the New Year, generally by train, making it exceptionally difficult to buy tickets.  Fortunately, I think that not only has my Chinese improved significantly since October, but I also learned how the system works!  So, ten days in advance, at 8:30am, I lined myself up at the train ticket office, and purchased my tickets to Guilin for the 9th.  I also managed to get my ticket from Guilin to Shenzhen for the 13th so it all worked out beautifully.  Finally, I was a bit worried about getting back to Beijing to fly home, BUT managed to find a cheap(ish) plane ticket on elong.net so it all worked out perfectly.  Glorious.

Anyways, my parents left Beijing on the 8th, which left me with an approximately 15 hour period to accomplish EVERYTHING before I had to leave the next day.  So I packed, bought all the necessary things, dropped off most of my luggage with a friend in Sanlitun, met with my language partner, had dinner with a friend, answered all my emails, AND still nearly overslept and missed my train in the morning.  Haha.  Fortunately, I did not, and boarded my train at 8:18am and then spent the next 30 hours IN TRANSIT.  That's right, the train from Beijing to Guilin takes exactly 27 hours and 28 minutes, followed by another 90 minute bus excursion to get to Yangshuo itself.  I am quite happy that I ended up spending the whole three days in Yangshuo, instead of returning to Guilin as I had planned, given that approximately 15 minutes after arriving in Guilin, someone tried to pickpocket me (BADLY, I might add).  Not a super awesome city, although perhaps the experience of others may differ.

Yangshuo (阳朔) is insanely beautiful, by the way.  It was apparently one of the first locations in China opened up to backpackers back in the 80s and so has kind of developed into a full-blown tourist town, but that really doesn't detract from it in my opinion, despite what people may say.  The scenery is beautiful, full of these strange rocky, mountains that seem to burst out of an otherwise flat area and rivers and small, yet-undeveloped villages.  The primary activities in Yangshuo are outdoors ones: biking, climbing, hiking, rafting, etc.  I have a feeling my sister, Olga, would love it.
I stayed at the En Attendant Godot Youth Hostel, an homage to an absurdist, 20th century play by Samuel Beckett.  The owners were young and really friendly and in general, very helpful.  What's more, I was sharing a room with some other westerners (Chris, Amy, and Stan) who I ended up spending most of the trip with. The first night I arrived, we went out for some tasty local beer fish (啤酒鱼) together.  The next day we embarked on a bike journey to see the Dragon Bridge (not nearly as impressive as it sounds), and up to the town of Baishao (白沙 ... I think) to see the local market.  It ended up being a 30 km bike ride that continue to pain my body for the next couple of days, but it was also really lovely.

There was one section where the path stopped completely, and in fact, the only way to continue biking was to hire a bamboo raft to cross the river blocking the route.  So, for around 40块, we embarked on a wholly terrifying journey across this river.  Stan, the resident Dutchman, went across first with the bikes.

Stan with the bikes

Meanwhile, Chris really, truly, empatically, did not want to buy any oranges off this one
super persistant women

The view from the Dragon Bridge, which again was not as impressive as the name implied.

 At 白沙, we grabbed a quick lunch and explored the market, which was... an experience.  It resembled an Eastern European Bazaar of sorts, from my childhood, where they sold quite literally everything.  Clothes, cosmetics, food, toys, New Years decorations, etc.  The most interesting, and simultaneously disgusting, was the meat section.  They just had chunks of meat hanging out in the open, along with intestines, whole birds, pigs' heads, etc.  What's more, I learned just how removed from my food I am as at this market, you could buy super FRESH meat, as in you would choose a live chicken and they would butcher it for you on the spot.  The fish were also all very fresh, but much more intent on their freedom and so we saw MANY jumping out of their shallow tubs and eventually flapping around on the ground until the 'shop' owner decided to notice and toss them back in.  The fish, by the way, were made somewhat more hilarious, and perhaps I'm a terrible person for saying this, by Amy's apparent fish phobia... In any case, it was certainly an interesting experience.

The next day, we decided to charter a bamboo raft up the Li river to the town of Fuli (福利).  This is the first time I've been in China where I actually felt like I was ripping someone off and not the other way around.  The woman offered us a trip to the village for 100块, not per person, total.  The trip itself is about 1 hour each way, and when we got there, the guy did not even demand half the money and what's more, waited on us for TWO-AND-A-HALF HOURS while we explored the city.  We (and by we, I mean, Amy and I) felt so bad we tacked on an extra 30块 when we paid.  In any case it was wonderful, and we saw some truly beautiful sights.

The town of 福利 itself, was like most villages, an interesting juxtaposition of new and old, and generally representative of a stereotypical run-down Chinese village, with perhaps the slight stipulation that it was a bit more tourist-friendly.  In any case, as for the buildings, it seems like instead of maintaining or fixing up the already existing buildings, the people of this town (as well as the many others we saw on our bike ride the previous day) were content to just throw up new ones right next to the old ones.  Bizarre.  

 We bought some things at the village that were also ludicrously cheap.  For instance, 8 pairs of decorated chopsticks for 10块, scrolls for 20块, etc. There was also a market in 福利 the day we went.

The entrance to the market in 福利.

We decided that eating at one of the stalls in the market was a bit on the sketchy side and would possibly give us food poisoning, so we found what looked like a hostel or very cheap hotel and ate some hot pot there.  Better, right?  WRONG.  I know that innards are supposed to be a delicacy or something, but the fact is we got an entire plate of intestines, liver, stomach, and more to dip into our hot pot and absolutely no real meat.  The veggies and tofu were not exceptionally tasty either, and when we asked for noodles, the owner dispatched his son to run to the market and buy some.  It was... special.

Potentially the world's worst hot pot.  ever.

 We felt bad about leaving out bamboo raft guy waiting for so long, so we got a little motorized rickshaw thing to take us back, also for only 10块.  It was quite a bumpy ride as he very quickly turned off the main road and onto these alleyways... which were so narrows that two of these cars did not in fact fit.

 Overall, a day well spent, although somewhat chilly near the end.  We ended up in Lucy's, a small cafe in the touristy part of town, for drinks and dice and cards.  This was... possibly the way we spent every evening and every morning (for breakfast, of course) as well.  We were well on our way to becoming regular customers.  :)

Lastly, for your amusement, I present "Minnie Mao's Cafe".  Yes, that is a picture of Minnie Mouse in a Mao cap.  No, I do not pretend to understand.  That is all for this post.  I do have to say that Blogger's new interface really is the bee's knees and that creating this post was SO MUCH EASIER than in the past.  Expect a lot more back-dated posts in the near future as I have a lot of photos and stories to share.  hearts and stars,马雅

Too Many People in this City

One of the things that I don't think I've yet mentioned is that if you want to see a bigger, better version of a photo, just click on it. They get prettier I swear! :)

In any case, today I visited the Summer Palace (颐和园) in Beijing. The Palace is one of the must-see locations in the city, right up there with the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, so I figured I would go check it out. Basically, what is considered the "Summer Palace" is actually a really large expanse of gardens and buildings built along Kunming Lake (昆明湖) in Northwest Beijing. The present version dates back to the early 20th century when it was rebuilt after first being destroyed by the Anglo-French invasion of 1860 and then being ransacked by the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Ultimately, it is best known for being Empress Dowager Cixi's (慈禧太后) summer resort. I rented an audio guide for 40块 and wandered around for approximately 3 hours. It was also kind of cool because the audio guide was GPS-controlled or something and the bits about each location would go off automatically when you entered the appropriate area. It was actually an informative and interesting guide, so that was good. I didn't get to see everything though, and I honestly think you could spend at least half a day on the ground.

The following pictures document some of the beautiful scenery and architecture you can admire as you wander through the park.

You can see my dorky looking audio-guide in this picture. haha.

One of the more frustrating things that I've run into in exploring tourist locations though is the sheer number of people. In general, I think I end up choosing photos for this blog that do not really demonstrate this fact, but there are just too many people in this country, and it really shows at the tourist hot spots. I have not yet found a time of day or a day of the week when there are fewer people around (Although I guess it not being October Holiday is a bonus). There are always a million tours going around as well as people on their own, making it such that you honestly have to push and shove to see everything. Even worse, the inevitable result of the ridiculous density of people here is the insane commercialization of ALL tourist destinations.

Now, I am completely fine with a few souvenir shops and restaurants throughout a park or museum or palace. However, every ten feet there is another shop or cruddy food stand or whatever. Don't think that this is just a result of ignorant foreign tourists either. I swear to you, Chinese tourists buy as much if not more from these people! ...and of course, this is China. The vendors do not simply wait for you to approach them. "Hello. Hello! Water! two kuai!" "You want bracelet?" "Hello! Summer Palace Map! five kuai!" And they rarely listen to you when you shake your head and say no. I have had things shoved in my face, despite my obvious refusal to purchase them. Even in places like 华山 where I went last week, a sacred mountain and beautiful park area, on the top of the mountain there were vendors every two feet. I don't even know how they managed to build shops up there. When I was climbing the Great Wall, a woman followed me and Hedrick for at least half a kilometer. I wish there was some sort of limitation on the amount of vendors in a destination, or at least, that the vendors themselves were a little less pushy. :/

The thing is, I really enjoyed the Summer Palace, especially when you get away from the edge of Kunming Lake and into the areas where fewer people are wandering about. I do get frustrated sometimes by things that are cultural norms here in China. Oh well! Oh well I guess that's part of the experience too. :)

hearts and stars,

马雅

Experience the Brilliant Chinese Civilization

So yesterday I decided to make the trek out to the Beijing Capital Museum, on which my Lonely Planet Beijing guide comments: "With Beijing busily hatching a huge and disparate brood of new and often rather pointless museums, this modern and sleek addition is a showpiece achievement." Incidentally, there's a reason that Lonely Planet guides will, on occasion, get confiscated at China's borders. They can be kind of harsh sometimes. Haha.

In any case, the Beijing Capital Museum is located in the southwest part of Beijing, which has surprisingly few "sights" to visit according to my guide books. Basically, it's not a very tourist-y area. Incidentally, this photo depicts part of it (I tend to be good at capturing the nice side of Beijing. Trust me, it is not a particularly pretty city), and in general, it seems to mostly be just offices, apartments, schools, etc.

So it's kind of weird when this super modern building pops up in the midst of everything (Also, I don't know if you can tell, but it's huge):

Anyways, so the Beijing Capital Museum is one of the city's premiere art museums. It's primarily home to a variety of Chinese historical artifacts, anything from porcelain, Buddha statues, wall scrolls, jade jewelry, etc. It's also kind of interesting because a large number of the artifacts are from the Beijing area. I did actually really enjoy looking at the displays, but I kind of wish that either (a) my Mandarin was better or (b) the museum had made a better effort to cater to a more international audience because while there were clearly descriptions of a lot of the objects in Mandarin, the English descriptions were usually one word titles. They did translate a lot of the room descriptions though, and they actually weren't in horribly butchered English. However, they were laden with lots of fun propaganda about the glorious motherland, and that's actually where the title of this post comes from.

In any case, I took some pictures (with my shoddy camera. Yes, I apologize) of choice pieces in the museum:

Also, at the time that I visited, they were hosting the saddest exhibit ever of some paintings from Amsterdam. Namely, it was a room with approximately 10 paintings in it, most of them relatively unknown, and then a Van Gogh self-portrait as the centerpiece (with a marked off line leading to it and everything). It was kind of strange, but perhaps in the future they will attempt to host more international art? It's unclear. I'm kind of exceptionally curious as to whether that's just the fault of this particular museum, whether it's a lack of interest on the country's or the people's side, a lack of trust from museums in other place, the political climate, or what. I think it's a very interesting question.

In any case, one of the parts of the museum that was kind of exciting and that you can't really see from the outside is this ridiculous skewed cylinder:

There are, in fact, approximately six floors of exhibits in there, and the way you climb up is by this ramp that spirals around the outside of the cylinder. Now remember the cylinder is slanted. So walking up this ramp is pretty much one of the most dizzying experiences I've ever had outside of an amusement park. Basically, not only is the floor curving and rising, the walls are at an angle and that angle is changing as you make your way the full 360 degrees. It is quite disconcerting. I tried to take a photo, but I don't think it was able to really capture the weirdness of the whole thing. In any case, cool architecture.

I've also been thinking about travel plans. I'm definitely going to try to head over to 西安 (Xi'an) for the October holiday. This, of course, depends on a lot of things, the most important being that the Chinese government currently has my passport, and I cannot buy a train ticket... without my passport. They claimed that they'll get it back to me on September 30th, but we'll see. Also, because it's the holiday, everyone and their mother (quite literally) will be travelling, and so I'm not even certain that I will be able to buy a train ticket. Cross your fingers!

In addition, I have decided that I want to go to Harbin in January. It will be incredibly cold (Harbin is, in fact, right below Siberia), but they have an awesome ice/snow festival every year. They also have Siberian tigers and a fancy cathedral and all sorts of things to see. There's a lot of Russian influence so it would interesting to see how that looks this far east. In any case, this is my very very vague plan for now. January is still very far away. :)

hearts and stars,

马雅

I Love Being a Tourist

Why hello there. :) So I had a super exciting weekend. It involved doing a lot of tourist-y things, hanging out with my old BC Calculus teacher, and a lot of rugby.

So Friday, I decided I want to see more of the city, so I hopped the subway over to 天安门广场(Tiananmen Square) to see what the deal was. I mean, you've gotta be a tourist at some point, and I have been warned that I should do it now because the October holiday when there are approximately many million MORE people in this city (haha) and before it's gets unreasonably cold.

Mao and I, we're like basically BFFs now. The most entertaining part of this picture though is so I asked this lady who was with her like whole family to take my picture. She obliged super nicely and then, so in Beijing there are a ton of international people because it's a pretty major city. However, people who are hanging around the tourist-y areas are probably not from Beijing. Therefore, white people, we're a bit of a spectacle. So after she took my picture, she asked me to take a picture with my "new friend", her little two-year-old son. I mean, so I obliged, and afterwards the son gave me the most adorable "Thank you" in existence. It was kind of amusing.

Here are some more pictures from the 天安门 area:

正阳门箭楼(Zheng4yang2 Men2jian4lou2)

正阳(Zheng4yang2) Gate

毛主席纪念堂 (Mao2Zhu3zi2 ji4nian4tang2) - Chairman Mao Zedong Memorial Hall

And for fun, these were pretty awesome. They're little Chinese soldier dudes that shuffle along on their own making gun noises. I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Also, I apologize for the insanely long post! This weekend was pretty busy, and I have an insanely large amount of photos (Of which, I am legitimately sharing only a small amount!). Anyhow, on Sunday, I happened to meet up with an old friend (haha), my old BC Calculus teacher, Hedrick:

because it is, in fact, much easier for us to meet up randomly in Asia than in the the States. Haha. We decided to make a trek along the Great Wall (because I had not been yet, given that I've only been here, you know, a week, and he had only been once), specifically in the unrestored part of the 司马台 (Si1ma3tai2) section of the Wall. I think it was much cooler than seeing the restored parts, and climbing through the super steep rubble was pretty exciting and somewhat treacherous. Like, quite literally, I'm pretty sure you would just not be able to go on terrain like this in the States because there are definitely parts where like, stairs are missing, super steep, crumbling, and whatnot. At the very least, they would have built in handrails are something. Anyways, super-exciting! And of course, I took lots of pictures:

We finished off the day by heading back to Beijing and going out to 北京大董烤鸭店 (Da Dong Roast Duck) for some insanely delicious Peking Duck, of course, the city's specialty:

That's the general gist of my weekend, and sorry for the insanely long post! Hopefully, I made up for it with exciting photos. :) Expect more soon! My mother made a special request to see more of my school so I'll try and get some photos of that.

hearts and stars,

马雅