9/6 7:11am CST
http://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/9_6?authkey=Gv1sRgCNbcjZiRgsSKpAE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZGsFqPBVNg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F39cvUbfemk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs0i9Byz4ls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDceo5LcLTo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhrCxEonSkM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWkvk2U20ZE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR4kXtTSvWo
Woke up after heading to bed pretty early. Supposedly we are above 3000m now, but I don't feel any different. The sun doesn't come up until around 8am or so. All of China is on the same timezone, so officially, the sunrises get later and later in time as you move west. Some people around Urumqi in Xinjiang (the provice north of Tibet) use a time that's offset by 2 hours, but it's not official.
Even without the sun up, it's apparent that the landscape has evolved overnight. There are almost no signs of habitation out there. Very occasionally you'll see a flock of yaks or whatever these cowlike animals are. I plan to get some sweet pics and movies of the scenery. It's really really wild. I saw a little antelope by itself running around near the track, and also a hyrax-like animal running on the drainage ditch near the track. Really wish I'd gotten these on camera.
Managed to snap a blurry photo of 3 antelope running along. But then I also saw this pair of strange sloth/anteater looking creatures. They were either really shaggy or really fat. Finally, I spotted this tiny fox running around. It seems like every wild animal is conducting its business and then has to bolt when the train comes by.
My mom's got some symptoms of high altitude sickness -- a touch of dizziness, headaches, purple lips. I haven't really felt anything, but hopefully it'll get better before we get to Lhasa. My cold seems to be going away, though leaving me with a bit of a dry nose and sinus.
My mom is getting a bit worse. After some deliberation on how to deal with her adjustment, she hooked up to the car oxygen, to see if it would improve her condition. Seems to be helping so far. As for me, my fingers are a little purple and I'm a bit more lightheaded when I get up and move about. I would say I just feel extremely languid. We're at 4500m and will peak to 5000m for a bit, then slope back down into 3000m for Lhasa. Hopefully we'll all be adjusted by then. We're not supposed to shower right away, as all the drawing of blood to the surface vessels can cause fainting.
We were parked for almost an hour at one station waiting for another train to pass. It's so remote now that there's only a single track for both ways. That train was going to Shanghai. Must be a hell of a ride. While we were waiting, it started hailing with the sun out. I managed to get that on video. Pretty weird, given that it was 16 deg C.
One thing I've noticed is that the railway workers seem to be instructed to stand at attention when a train passes. Some salute, some just stand, others stand but face the other way,even when there is no train track that way. Not sure what it means. But it's interesting to see so many employed by the Chinese rail system. I guess it'd be kind of terrible to get fired when an official catches you shirking your duties from a passing train.
Most depressing thing I saw was this tiny village whose basketball court didn't have poles on either end. Cows were lounging around on it.
The final hours til Lhasa are agonizing. We keep taking stops at tiny stations to let trains pass. I guess we're very close at this point.
When we arrive, it's again very picturesque. The Lhasa train station is built to evoke the shapes of Tibetan architecture. Eventually we find our contact, a coworker of my mom's college classmate. He has with him a Tibetan tour guide that he's hired to take us around for the next few days. Tsenam has the very cheesy honors of putting on us these white scarves, which I assume at some point must have been traditional. We get in some Landcruisers and go over to the Xiongbala Hotel, which claims to be the best in Lhasa. Cars seem to observe whatever traffic laws there are casually. Once we drop things off in our rooms, we quickly turn around and head out to a restaurant.
The restaurant isn't a Tibetan restaurant, but specializes in Shandong cuisine. Shandong is a northern province that I would say offers very good seafood dishes.
On a more negative note, I'll comment on the special treatment we're getting here. Obviously, not everyone has the connections to get ushered around Lhasa virtually free of charge. I have no pretensions that this part of the trip is anything but highly privileged. While I'm sure we could have made arrangements to do most of the same things on our own, having it all planned for us ahead of time is extremely convenient. Sometimes I'd like to think that when I go back to China, I'm just an ordinary person, but occasions like this remind me that's far from true. On top of all that, there's the extreme deference of our Tibetan guides, which is causing me some discomfort. One of the drivers joined us at the dinner table, and he absolutely was not part of the conversation. I wasn't chatting much either, but I still found the way he was being marginalized to be quite upsetting. If he were a Han Chinese in the same position, I'm sure everyone would have been warmer to him. There was a brief discussion on Tibetan independence, and everyone at the table practically treated him as empty space. My mom, it shames me to say, voiced some nationalist-tinged rhetoric on how the Dalai Lama would be ineffectual at improving an independent Tibet's economic status and added that some Tibetans are swayed by their blind love for the Dalai Lama. She tried to negate what she said by telling the driver to feel free to ignore her misconceptions, which of course does nothing to blunt the venom of an attitude like hers, which is very common. I told her right then that it was rude even to be able to think such things while we were in the presence of a Tibetan. The politics bother me less than my mother's ability to treat someone as a non-entity incapable of having legitimate opinions. As for my own views on Tibet, I note only this -- all along the railway, I saw an unyielding march of eletric towers bringing in electricity, courtesy of central planning from China. I wonder if Tibetans want or need that? If they didn't have those towers and power lines all over the place, my pictures of the countryside would probably look like Tibet 1000 years ago.
The driver and our waitress (also Tibetan) were beseeched by our host to speak some Tibetan and teach us a few phrases.
Tujin na -- thank you
Kalasa suo -- eat!
Tashi deleh -- something like aloha
My hotel room looks like a scene from Uncharted 2 and I have a picture to prove it.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
9/5
9/5 6:56am CST
http://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/9_5?authkey=Gv1sRgCPPPovr7-aGzZQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIf3FEzhtJo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvaf8sYM-So
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yo8ZRyX1QI
Woke up on the train. We're probably an hour outside of Xi'an in Shaanxi, which I believe is Bo's hometown. That'd be only a quarter or so of the way to Lhasa, but still decent progress for one night's sleep.
Fortunately, there is an outlet on the train, so I can document everything en route. I forgot to mention that we got tickets on a bed car. Each room has 4 bunks in it. So some random teenager got the 4th bunk. Between his questionable background story and the natural suspicion with which Chinese treat strangers, I think my parents were pretty wary of him. He got off at Xi'an. We'll see if someone replaces him.
One thing'll I'll note about China -- bathrooms are dirty. In general, public and shared places are dirty. It's like no one cares to clean them. So even our friends' nice new apartment complex -- the lobby and outside areas were just filthy. The same is true of the train bathrooms. No one really respects the cleanliness of the space so it gets nasty fast. But, because everything is so dirty, you don't see many people loitering about, so there's not much graffiti. Between the smell of ammonia and some colorful remarks by bored stall sitters, I'd rather take the graffiti.
On the topic of water -- fresh drinking water is a precious thing in China. It's not something that a restaurant can readily serve for you. You could certainly get some bottled water, at a huge markup. But it's something you should bring with you. On the train, each car has a boiled water faucet, and each room has a pitcher that you fill up. The water comes out close to boiling, so you have to fill up at intervals and let it cool off before you can drink it. Even now, it is still customary to drink hot tea at restaurants and warm boiled water at home with meals. I can live with it, but I'm still pretty used to having drinking water at hand at all times.
Now we're riding through Shaanxi. It's a very hilly country. As we get out of the urban areas, all you are the insides of tunnels, and emerging from them, swollen streams and wet riverbeds. There's steep hills lining the countryside, and nestled between them, by the waters are small and extremely rustic villages. There's plenty of houses without windows even doors. The people seem to be making a living off of farming and mining. While the urban centers of China have made a marked improvement toward middle class, I don't think much has changed here. 50% of Chinese people are still farmers barely making a living selling their crops.
That said, the country side is extremely picturesque. There's fully green hills, terraced hills, dirt cliffs that look like they would collapse at the first hint of heavy rain. In a few spots, I even seen primitive dwellings dug out into the hillside. These would were probably occupied in modern times before Communism liberated and modernized the country. I suspect the view won't change much in the hours and hours until we hit the high plains. Just millions of average northernr Chinese leading a lifestyle that hasn't changed much in decades. And yet progress is still coming. You can see various projects being built up. The buttresses of new highways being poured from concrete, and earthen ramps leading to new developments on the hillsides. I'd like to see what happens to these places in another 10 years. I've got a few pictures and videos, but I don't know how representative they can be. It's best to remember that China is a big country, and that much of it is like this, and not like in the cities. Any scene you can picture, I probably saw -- a boy playing by himself on rocks in the middle of a turbid stream; a broken down 3-wheel truck on a dirt road; a few cows grazing on the slope of a hill; railworkers piling up bags of fertilizer to be shipped eastward; a peasant girl taking a piss just outside of her village; a stone-lined drainage ditch plunging down a hill at 70 degrees, leading rainwater into an irrigation canal; a cemetary not but 5 meters next to a small cornfield; a huge trashpit fire being tended by a few locals; a precarious wooden suspension bridge.
All of this linked together by the Chinese rail system. I can't imagine how things would be further out from the rail.
Apparently, the railroad through to Lhasa was only completed in 2006. The high elevation made it hard for the railworkers to maintain a decent pace of progress.
Another anecdote -- my dad still remembers his college student id: 776307. 1977 for his entering year, 63 for his submajor -- uranium geology, and 7 for his number in his class (everyone in a submajor is in the same 'class').
3:36pm
We get off for a 30 min break at the Lanzhou station. From the architecture and landscape, we've definitely moved further out west. I get some food, since the lunch in the dining car was so expensive (discussing it would be beneath me). One of the items I get is one of my fave hot dogs, the Shuanghui brand hot dog. It's just a very mild a familiar taste. I would say in between a regular American hot dog and a vienna sausage. We also got some cucumbers, which I'm not so hot on eating. We'll just wash them a lot with boiling water, I guess.
Now's a good time to talk about class. The meal I had on the dining car was only $4, but that comes out to a lot of money in China. On top of that, my family is comfortably ensconced in one of the soft bed cars. Obviously it's worth the extra cash for us to have something resembling privacy and being able to sleep on a bed. For a fraction of the price of our ticket, you could get to Lhasa in the same 46 hours in one of the hard-seat cars. Imagine living, eating, and sleeping for 2 days from the same spot. You'd have access to a nightmarish bathroom shared among 50 people, and, to save money, whatever food you brought with you to last the trip. Instant ramen is a gimmick quick meal for the average college student in America, but it's very nice convenience for the typical poor Chinese rail traveler. It's fairly compact and light, and all you need to do is fill up your mug at the boiling water faucet to prepare it. Of course, the poorest travelers wouldn't waste their money on instant ramen. Most of the cars in the train are hard- and soft-seat cars. I wish I could take a photo of how people are seated in those, but it'd be a bit rude to run back there and snap a shot.
8:26pm
An uneventful afternoon. Both my parents fell asleep, unable to cope with the jetlag. I was way ahead with my 4am sleep schedule from back home. I spent most of it reading and watching the scenery change a bit over the miles. The conductor came by to drop off what amounted to a liability waiver for passengers entering the 3000m+ elevation of the high plains. I puzzled out how to fill it out with my limited reading and writing capability. Hopefully I'll remember how to write Lhasa
From the cultural tutorial playing over the PA: "...Tibetans do not look kindly upon killing cats, frogs, turtles..." I guess the stereotypes are true about us Han Chinese. The tutorial also advises against drinking, as the high altitude is a conduit to getting incredibly wasted (as well as incredibly hung over the next day). The altitude sickness is getting preached a lot. With lots of old people on this train, I can't say I'm that worried about it. It ranks somewhat higher than seeing a Yeti on a mountain pass. Which according to Uncharted 2, can definitely happen. But I am curious where in the spectrum I'll fall. I'll just pretend the whole first day that I'm between rounds in kickboxing and try to gulp down recovery air.
http://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/9_5?authkey=Gv1sRgCPPPovr7-aGzZQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIf3FEzhtJo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvaf8sYM-So
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yo8ZRyX1QI
Woke up on the train. We're probably an hour outside of Xi'an in Shaanxi, which I believe is Bo's hometown. That'd be only a quarter or so of the way to Lhasa, but still decent progress for one night's sleep.
Fortunately, there is an outlet on the train, so I can document everything en route. I forgot to mention that we got tickets on a bed car. Each room has 4 bunks in it. So some random teenager got the 4th bunk. Between his questionable background story and the natural suspicion with which Chinese treat strangers, I think my parents were pretty wary of him. He got off at Xi'an. We'll see if someone replaces him.
One thing'll I'll note about China -- bathrooms are dirty. In general, public and shared places are dirty. It's like no one cares to clean them. So even our friends' nice new apartment complex -- the lobby and outside areas were just filthy. The same is true of the train bathrooms. No one really respects the cleanliness of the space so it gets nasty fast. But, because everything is so dirty, you don't see many people loitering about, so there's not much graffiti. Between the smell of ammonia and some colorful remarks by bored stall sitters, I'd rather take the graffiti.
On the topic of water -- fresh drinking water is a precious thing in China. It's not something that a restaurant can readily serve for you. You could certainly get some bottled water, at a huge markup. But it's something you should bring with you. On the train, each car has a boiled water faucet, and each room has a pitcher that you fill up. The water comes out close to boiling, so you have to fill up at intervals and let it cool off before you can drink it. Even now, it is still customary to drink hot tea at restaurants and warm boiled water at home with meals. I can live with it, but I'm still pretty used to having drinking water at hand at all times.
Now we're riding through Shaanxi. It's a very hilly country. As we get out of the urban areas, all you are the insides of tunnels, and emerging from them, swollen streams and wet riverbeds. There's steep hills lining the countryside, and nestled between them, by the waters are small and extremely rustic villages. There's plenty of houses without windows even doors. The people seem to be making a living off of farming and mining. While the urban centers of China have made a marked improvement toward middle class, I don't think much has changed here. 50% of Chinese people are still farmers barely making a living selling their crops.
That said, the country side is extremely picturesque. There's fully green hills, terraced hills, dirt cliffs that look like they would collapse at the first hint of heavy rain. In a few spots, I even seen primitive dwellings dug out into the hillside. These would were probably occupied in modern times before Communism liberated and modernized the country. I suspect the view won't change much in the hours and hours until we hit the high plains. Just millions of average northernr Chinese leading a lifestyle that hasn't changed much in decades. And yet progress is still coming. You can see various projects being built up. The buttresses of new highways being poured from concrete, and earthen ramps leading to new developments on the hillsides. I'd like to see what happens to these places in another 10 years. I've got a few pictures and videos, but I don't know how representative they can be. It's best to remember that China is a big country, and that much of it is like this, and not like in the cities. Any scene you can picture, I probably saw -- a boy playing by himself on rocks in the middle of a turbid stream; a broken down 3-wheel truck on a dirt road; a few cows grazing on the slope of a hill; railworkers piling up bags of fertilizer to be shipped eastward; a peasant girl taking a piss just outside of her village; a stone-lined drainage ditch plunging down a hill at 70 degrees, leading rainwater into an irrigation canal; a cemetary not but 5 meters next to a small cornfield; a huge trashpit fire being tended by a few locals; a precarious wooden suspension bridge.
All of this linked together by the Chinese rail system. I can't imagine how things would be further out from the rail.
Apparently, the railroad through to Lhasa was only completed in 2006. The high elevation made it hard for the railworkers to maintain a decent pace of progress.
Another anecdote -- my dad still remembers his college student id: 776307. 1977 for his entering year, 63 for his submajor -- uranium geology, and 7 for his number in his class (everyone in a submajor is in the same 'class').
3:36pm
We get off for a 30 min break at the Lanzhou station. From the architecture and landscape, we've definitely moved further out west. I get some food, since the lunch in the dining car was so expensive (discussing it would be beneath me). One of the items I get is one of my fave hot dogs, the Shuanghui brand hot dog. It's just a very mild a familiar taste. I would say in between a regular American hot dog and a vienna sausage. We also got some cucumbers, which I'm not so hot on eating. We'll just wash them a lot with boiling water, I guess.
Now's a good time to talk about class. The meal I had on the dining car was only $4, but that comes out to a lot of money in China. On top of that, my family is comfortably ensconced in one of the soft bed cars. Obviously it's worth the extra cash for us to have something resembling privacy and being able to sleep on a bed. For a fraction of the price of our ticket, you could get to Lhasa in the same 46 hours in one of the hard-seat cars. Imagine living, eating, and sleeping for 2 days from the same spot. You'd have access to a nightmarish bathroom shared among 50 people, and, to save money, whatever food you brought with you to last the trip. Instant ramen is a gimmick quick meal for the average college student in America, but it's very nice convenience for the typical poor Chinese rail traveler. It's fairly compact and light, and all you need to do is fill up your mug at the boiling water faucet to prepare it. Of course, the poorest travelers wouldn't waste their money on instant ramen. Most of the cars in the train are hard- and soft-seat cars. I wish I could take a photo of how people are seated in those, but it'd be a bit rude to run back there and snap a shot.
8:26pm
An uneventful afternoon. Both my parents fell asleep, unable to cope with the jetlag. I was way ahead with my 4am sleep schedule from back home. I spent most of it reading and watching the scenery change a bit over the miles. The conductor came by to drop off what amounted to a liability waiver for passengers entering the 3000m+ elevation of the high plains. I puzzled out how to fill it out with my limited reading and writing capability. Hopefully I'll remember how to write Lhasa
From the cultural tutorial playing over the PA: "...Tibetans do not look kindly upon killing cats, frogs, turtles..." I guess the stereotypes are true about us Han Chinese. The tutorial also advises against drinking, as the high altitude is a conduit to getting incredibly wasted (as well as incredibly hung over the next day). The altitude sickness is getting preached a lot. With lots of old people on this train, I can't say I'm that worried about it. It ranks somewhat higher than seeing a Yeti on a mountain pass. Which according to Uncharted 2, can definitely happen. But I am curious where in the spectrum I'll fall. I'll just pretend the whole first day that I'm between rounds in kickboxing and try to gulp down recovery air.
Monday, September 27, 2010
note on Picasa pics
Some of the pictures, especially the panoramas, may be done more justice at resolutions higher than 1600. If you want the full res versions, just email me.
9/4
9/4 1:25am Beijing Time aka China Standard Time
http://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/9_3?authkey=Gv1sRgCIHb0YmxwIC9JA
Landed. Pretty wild to be back in China. Weather seems good. We got two meals on the flight, which I wasn't expecting. As we flew in, I also noticed what seemed to be a two exit roundabout. Which seems like the most wastful thing. I'm gonna go get my luggage and meet up with my parents.
A note about the airport: at 1am local time, the international wing is eerily quiet. We are the only passengers milling around in the empty building. The lights are all cut low (or maybe they're like this all the time). For a nation as frugal as China, it's easy to be green. I hear a couple of crickets coming from some of the potted plants. Not sure exactly what that says. When I walk on the jetway from the 777 to the terminal, I see below a squad of airport employees, each smartly wearing a reflective uniform and actually mustered in rows, standing at attention. A foreigner might liken the sight to that perceived stereotype of Japanese orderliness. I'm sure it's not to the same level, but already I can tell I'm in a different country and a different world.
Right before customs are signs advising us to walk slowly, through these infrared scanners. I can see that the machines are set to 35 degC, where 37.4 is body temperature. I imagine 35 is pretty hot for a scanner measuring the skin or just below. Obviously an anti-SARS/flu measure, but there's a very 28 Days Later feel about it. I pass through customs with the slip handed out during the flight. I wrote down in my 4th grade penmanship that I was visiting my Aunt in Tangshan. It doesn't really let you get specific, so I don't think I could have written it any better. After that, I go out the No Customs Declarations line (not that anyone was doing inspections) and find my dad and some other Beijing acquaintance at the terminal exit. They've been there a while since the delay had only been posted at the last minute. We take a taxi and head to our hotel. The roads are pretty deserted at this hour, but I still spy a riced out red and black Saab 9-5 with no plate and a Tahoe, of all things.
Apparently my parents had booked 3 rooms at this place. It must be kinda cheap. One for me, one for them, one for our friends who'd be helping ferry us around. I take a couple pictures of my room just for flavor. I didn't realize this beforehand, but my iPhone is tuned for 60Hz light, and China is on 50Hz. So that buzzing may show up in indoor shots.
The computer is charging up nicely, so at least I know my adapter works. I had a bit of trouble getting my travel adapter to work, though. Who knows what the situation will be as we ride the train to Tibet. Hopefully I'll manage.
Going to check out the hotel room's computer a bit. It's on a network.
Well, without reporting anything else, it seems that Gmail works from here. Handy.
9/4 8:47am CST
Couldn't sleep. It's like being inside of a conch shell. The hot water heater component of the water dispenser in my room roared up a few times. I had no idea what it was at first, but it kept waking me up. The voices outside the paper-thin walls started up early in the morning, and I got sick of trying to tell if any of them belonged to my parents. Jeez, some rooms away there's a pop song playing. There should be morning light, but urban packing the way it is in Beijing, it still looks like midnight out my window.
We'll be doing some quick visits around Beijing today, and leaving some luggage with friends. Later in the afternoon, we're boarding a train bound for Tibet. The weather's about to get dry and cold, over a 2-day train journey. The first memory I have of riding on a train is going down to my Dad's hometown. He was teasing to keep quiet, telling me about an upcoming geographical feature called "Rooster Mountain." So I piped down and kept looking for it out the window. It never came up, of course, so when I finally broke down and asked, he looked outside and picked 3 mounds in a line on the ground passing by, and said, "there, that's it!" I might have have been 4 at the time, but I knew it wasn't even a mountain and got angry and sad. The point here is that this time around, I'll keep my eye out and look at everything. Not sure when I'll be back online. On the outside, probably a few days.
My parents are up. To give you an idea of the quality establishment we're at, I go over and the handyman is trying to figure out why power is not working for the room. It seems to be going in and out. Can't shower in complete dark, so a hotel employee brought up a single candle to light the room up.
9/4 9:30am CST
http://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/9_4?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ-zqoTsoprmyQE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9VPLn0wC6A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZEOuzKrCVI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOo6t-s_H38
We go to our old family friends' new apartment in Beijing. Hugely assisting us is my mom's cousin, who had a Buick Regal of his own. Beijing is built around its concentric Ring Roads, sort of like Detroit. When we left Beijing in 1989, the outskirts of the city were just passing 3rd Ring Road (which is about where our apartment home was), which is about a 5km radius from the center of the city at the Forbidden Palace. Now in 2010, the city is developing between 6th and 7th Ring Road. So it's certainly gotten much bigger. Anyways, the problem with travel is that outside of the ring roads, nothing is regularly laid out. So if you're looking to avoid public transit, the only way to get around is to spend quality time on the ring roads, and the only way to do that is to have a friend with a car.
So we pack all of our luggage into Uncle Biao's car and head out. While I'm sure a lot of new buildings have gone up, there are still two traits to the Beijing landscape that haven't changed much. The first is the "small flats" that still crop up here and there. These are the original buildings that made up the city. They're one-floor buildings with walls surrounding them, built of stone, look pretty handmade and are very worn down. A lot of these walls are finished with upright glass shards as a security measure. So these small flats are the oldest parts of the city, and some of them are historically meaningful and may stay around for some time. I should find a picture of one, but it's pretty much like where Jackie Chan lives in the new karate kid. The other are the Communist-style block apartments. They don't look much different from a project apartment, but are still very characteristic of a Chinese city. Every floor has the windows and balconies and AC units in the same position. The regularity and lack of flair are in a way, charming.
Driving around the city, you see a mix of the above and some taller business buildings. The tallest building is only 330 meters, as Beijing is no longer interested in getting into any sort of famous building race after the Olypmics. I have some video of us driving around, partially to illustrate the unruliness of traffic, and partially to illustrate the look and feel of the city. I never got any of the crazy 3-way melees we had with other cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians on film, but they wouldn't be for the faint of heart anyways.
So eventually we get directions from our friends on how to reach their new place. They'd only been there a month so they weren't that familiar with their surroundings yet. This was a nice big apartment, but still utterly typically Chinese in its styling and upkeep. I think my photos will tell the whole story there. These friends I had known since my childhood in Beijing, and they are our oldest and closest friends in China. We didn't get to visit with them for long before we had to get on the move. Of course getting going starts off with eating, so we just go over to a local restaurant. Not a good one or anything, but I don't think anyone is concerned about the quality of food. Inside the place, blown up pictures of the specialities dont the walls. Every other dish is covered in diced red peppers, as the restaurant's specialty is apparently Chongqing food. But my mom and one of our family friends are both avoiding spicy foods for health reasons, so we stick to more traditional foods. We order among other dishes sliced donkey meat and a steamed fish. I thought the donkey meat was interesting and distinct, but probably no worth trying than deer meat. But I had to have it. The steamed fish was very good. Some average restaurant in China with no effort had handily destroyed any steamed fish dish served in any American shop. It was just a combination of freshness, flavoring (which was very subtle), and tenderness. As a side note, the Mao family style red-roasted meat was superb, but I wasn't really surprised by this.
We say goodbye after eating and head out to visit the Olympic site. I don't have too much to say on this. The buildings looked about as they did on TV, and it was as I expected a big-time tourist trap. It shouldn't surprise anyone that even two years after the Olympics, people are stil pouring in from all parts of China to visit the place. The shorthand for referring to the Bird's Nest and Water Cube in Chinese is Bird Nest - Cube, and all the signs and parking referred to them in that unit. I thought the buildings themselves still looked good, but it wasn't worth the 50 yuan to go look at empty stadiums inside. One thing I'll note is that things are getting run down and dirty looking, which is a little quick but again what you'd expect in China.
After a quick runthrough of the Olympic site, we get back into Biao's car and head to our final Beijing destination -- a dinner at the famed Quanjude Peking Duck restaurant. This is pretty much in the heart of the city, and thus is packed away in some serious traffic, even on a Saturday afternoon. Biao comments a bit on the 10-day traffic jam that had only just happened in Beijing, talking about a street food vendor that had made over 6000 yuan thanks to it. We don't face anything nearly that bad, but it still took 2 hours of stop-and-go traffic and circuitous navigation of the ring roads. I spy just a couple elite cars on the road. Beijing is not really the city for that. Anyways, we finally get to Quanjude and sit down at the table my cousin and her boyfriend have already reserved for us. I wouldn't say there's anything to-die-for at this place, but because our home has been in Beijing, and we'd already eaten there once in 1995, it's become a family tradition to come back here when we can. The experience has certainly changed over the years. When I last ate there, it was a sedate affair. You went in there, ordered, the chef came by with the duck and sliced it up for you. This time, there are guards helping you park the car, several hostesses in matching red dresses and white gloves, waiters in gold and black frog shirts, and even a steward in the bathroom handing you paper towels with tongs. I don't know if it was a gradual change to reflect the changing times, or a conscious decision to upgrade the experience, but I can tell everything has been revamped with Westernized marketing. There's a moment late in our meal, after we've already eaten half of it, when our waiter comes by and says, "let me explain briefly how the duck is prepared at Quanjude. The ducks are hand raised to 70-80 days, cooked for 60 minutes, until the color is golden brown and the skin is crisp." That's the sort of pump-up line that you wouldn't have heard in China in the past, at least not at the table.
Anyways, the food is great. We just order a 6-person set meal for the 6 of us. Among the appetizers are: duck liver (almost pate quality), fried duck hearts, and sliced duck gizzards. I liked all of those organ meats. The chef wheels his cart out and starts slicing up the duck. He expertly lays out slices of meat and also separates out the special bits of skin. These are places where most of the fat is rendered out and only a scaffold of tissue remains under the crispy skin. When you bite into it, it melts like a foam would. That's the specialty around which the whole experience is based, and that is certainly something that's hard to get right elsewhere. So the key dish is hoisin sauce, green onions, a dough wrap, and the slices of duck, put together like a burrito. In addition to that, some of the other main course dishes were duck soup (a side dish made in preparing the roast duck) a mushroom soup, a sea cucumber salad, and fried duck liver. The mushroom soup really stood out. There was no ginger, which I like, and an incredible extraction of mushroom flavor. The pictures should do this meal more justice.
After the whole meal was wrapped up, we give the leftovers to my cousin to keep and hop into the subway (another reason we ate at Quanjude -- it is very close to a subway station). We leave some gifts with Biao and are thus able to ditch a bag this way. Getting to the Beijing West train station was a bit arduous with all the stairs and luggage, but we eventually make it into the station and wait. After about 30 minutes, the harpy station announcer screeches out the call for the Lhasa train. They switch up at the last moment where they want people to file through, so there is a massive human wave rushing from one side of the hall to the other. My only complaint is that the station is not organized in any way to smooth out human traffic. There are some ridiculous bottlenecks that could be fixed, but probably costs too much. The station was also where I catch my first sighting of indoor spitting. It would be too much to hope for that that could have been civilized out of China so soon.
On the train, I really want to drop dead asleep, but there's some paperwork run by the conductor, as well as some important recorded announcements. The big thing about Lhasa is that it's very high elevation. Some people do not adjust well, even when the altitude increase is smoothed out by a train ride. So the train cars are equipped with oxygen outlets that people can use in an emergency. In addition, they'll start pumping in oxygen as part of the air conditioning. When that happens, people are not allowed to smoke on the train anymore. We'll see if that happens.
Two interesting alliterations I saw: The Killers: The Kai Le Si Band. I suppose actually translating The Killers would be a bit extreme. Citroen: Xue Tie Long, Snow Iron Dragon
The best Engrish: someone was wearing a shirt that read Qiaodan Basketball, in the Battlestar Galactica font. Qiaodan is the transliteration for Jordan.
http://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/9_3?authkey=Gv1sRgCIHb0YmxwIC9JA
Landed. Pretty wild to be back in China. Weather seems good. We got two meals on the flight, which I wasn't expecting. As we flew in, I also noticed what seemed to be a two exit roundabout. Which seems like the most wastful thing. I'm gonna go get my luggage and meet up with my parents.
A note about the airport: at 1am local time, the international wing is eerily quiet. We are the only passengers milling around in the empty building. The lights are all cut low (or maybe they're like this all the time). For a nation as frugal as China, it's easy to be green. I hear a couple of crickets coming from some of the potted plants. Not sure exactly what that says. When I walk on the jetway from the 777 to the terminal, I see below a squad of airport employees, each smartly wearing a reflective uniform and actually mustered in rows, standing at attention. A foreigner might liken the sight to that perceived stereotype of Japanese orderliness. I'm sure it's not to the same level, but already I can tell I'm in a different country and a different world.
Right before customs are signs advising us to walk slowly, through these infrared scanners. I can see that the machines are set to 35 degC, where 37.4 is body temperature. I imagine 35 is pretty hot for a scanner measuring the skin or just below. Obviously an anti-SARS/flu measure, but there's a very 28 Days Later feel about it. I pass through customs with the slip handed out during the flight. I wrote down in my 4th grade penmanship that I was visiting my Aunt in Tangshan. It doesn't really let you get specific, so I don't think I could have written it any better. After that, I go out the No Customs Declarations line (not that anyone was doing inspections) and find my dad and some other Beijing acquaintance at the terminal exit. They've been there a while since the delay had only been posted at the last minute. We take a taxi and head to our hotel. The roads are pretty deserted at this hour, but I still spy a riced out red and black Saab 9-5 with no plate and a Tahoe, of all things.
Apparently my parents had booked 3 rooms at this place. It must be kinda cheap. One for me, one for them, one for our friends who'd be helping ferry us around. I take a couple pictures of my room just for flavor. I didn't realize this beforehand, but my iPhone is tuned for 60Hz light, and China is on 50Hz. So that buzzing may show up in indoor shots.
The computer is charging up nicely, so at least I know my adapter works. I had a bit of trouble getting my travel adapter to work, though. Who knows what the situation will be as we ride the train to Tibet. Hopefully I'll manage.
Going to check out the hotel room's computer a bit. It's on a network.
Well, without reporting anything else, it seems that Gmail works from here. Handy.
9/4 8:47am CST
Couldn't sleep. It's like being inside of a conch shell. The hot water heater component of the water dispenser in my room roared up a few times. I had no idea what it was at first, but it kept waking me up. The voices outside the paper-thin walls started up early in the morning, and I got sick of trying to tell if any of them belonged to my parents. Jeez, some rooms away there's a pop song playing. There should be morning light, but urban packing the way it is in Beijing, it still looks like midnight out my window.
We'll be doing some quick visits around Beijing today, and leaving some luggage with friends. Later in the afternoon, we're boarding a train bound for Tibet. The weather's about to get dry and cold, over a 2-day train journey. The first memory I have of riding on a train is going down to my Dad's hometown. He was teasing to keep quiet, telling me about an upcoming geographical feature called "Rooster Mountain." So I piped down and kept looking for it out the window. It never came up, of course, so when I finally broke down and asked, he looked outside and picked 3 mounds in a line on the ground passing by, and said, "there, that's it!" I might have have been 4 at the time, but I knew it wasn't even a mountain and got angry and sad. The point here is that this time around, I'll keep my eye out and look at everything. Not sure when I'll be back online. On the outside, probably a few days.
My parents are up. To give you an idea of the quality establishment we're at, I go over and the handyman is trying to figure out why power is not working for the room. It seems to be going in and out. Can't shower in complete dark, so a hotel employee brought up a single candle to light the room up.
9/4 9:30am CST
http://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/9_4?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ-zqoTsoprmyQE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9VPLn0wC6A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZEOuzKrCVI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOo6t-s_H38
We go to our old family friends' new apartment in Beijing. Hugely assisting us is my mom's cousin, who had a Buick Regal of his own. Beijing is built around its concentric Ring Roads, sort of like Detroit. When we left Beijing in 1989, the outskirts of the city were just passing 3rd Ring Road (which is about where our apartment home was), which is about a 5km radius from the center of the city at the Forbidden Palace. Now in 2010, the city is developing between 6th and 7th Ring Road. So it's certainly gotten much bigger. Anyways, the problem with travel is that outside of the ring roads, nothing is regularly laid out. So if you're looking to avoid public transit, the only way to get around is to spend quality time on the ring roads, and the only way to do that is to have a friend with a car.
So we pack all of our luggage into Uncle Biao's car and head out. While I'm sure a lot of new buildings have gone up, there are still two traits to the Beijing landscape that haven't changed much. The first is the "small flats" that still crop up here and there. These are the original buildings that made up the city. They're one-floor buildings with walls surrounding them, built of stone, look pretty handmade and are very worn down. A lot of these walls are finished with upright glass shards as a security measure. So these small flats are the oldest parts of the city, and some of them are historically meaningful and may stay around for some time. I should find a picture of one, but it's pretty much like where Jackie Chan lives in the new karate kid. The other are the Communist-style block apartments. They don't look much different from a project apartment, but are still very characteristic of a Chinese city. Every floor has the windows and balconies and AC units in the same position. The regularity and lack of flair are in a way, charming.
Driving around the city, you see a mix of the above and some taller business buildings. The tallest building is only 330 meters, as Beijing is no longer interested in getting into any sort of famous building race after the Olypmics. I have some video of us driving around, partially to illustrate the unruliness of traffic, and partially to illustrate the look and feel of the city. I never got any of the crazy 3-way melees we had with other cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians on film, but they wouldn't be for the faint of heart anyways.
So eventually we get directions from our friends on how to reach their new place. They'd only been there a month so they weren't that familiar with their surroundings yet. This was a nice big apartment, but still utterly typically Chinese in its styling and upkeep. I think my photos will tell the whole story there. These friends I had known since my childhood in Beijing, and they are our oldest and closest friends in China. We didn't get to visit with them for long before we had to get on the move. Of course getting going starts off with eating, so we just go over to a local restaurant. Not a good one or anything, but I don't think anyone is concerned about the quality of food. Inside the place, blown up pictures of the specialities dont the walls. Every other dish is covered in diced red peppers, as the restaurant's specialty is apparently Chongqing food. But my mom and one of our family friends are both avoiding spicy foods for health reasons, so we stick to more traditional foods. We order among other dishes sliced donkey meat and a steamed fish. I thought the donkey meat was interesting and distinct, but probably no worth trying than deer meat. But I had to have it. The steamed fish was very good. Some average restaurant in China with no effort had handily destroyed any steamed fish dish served in any American shop. It was just a combination of freshness, flavoring (which was very subtle), and tenderness. As a side note, the Mao family style red-roasted meat was superb, but I wasn't really surprised by this.
We say goodbye after eating and head out to visit the Olympic site. I don't have too much to say on this. The buildings looked about as they did on TV, and it was as I expected a big-time tourist trap. It shouldn't surprise anyone that even two years after the Olympics, people are stil pouring in from all parts of China to visit the place. The shorthand for referring to the Bird's Nest and Water Cube in Chinese is Bird Nest - Cube, and all the signs and parking referred to them in that unit. I thought the buildings themselves still looked good, but it wasn't worth the 50 yuan to go look at empty stadiums inside. One thing I'll note is that things are getting run down and dirty looking, which is a little quick but again what you'd expect in China.
After a quick runthrough of the Olympic site, we get back into Biao's car and head to our final Beijing destination -- a dinner at the famed Quanjude Peking Duck restaurant. This is pretty much in the heart of the city, and thus is packed away in some serious traffic, even on a Saturday afternoon. Biao comments a bit on the 10-day traffic jam that had only just happened in Beijing, talking about a street food vendor that had made over 6000 yuan thanks to it. We don't face anything nearly that bad, but it still took 2 hours of stop-and-go traffic and circuitous navigation of the ring roads. I spy just a couple elite cars on the road. Beijing is not really the city for that. Anyways, we finally get to Quanjude and sit down at the table my cousin and her boyfriend have already reserved for us. I wouldn't say there's anything to-die-for at this place, but because our home has been in Beijing, and we'd already eaten there once in 1995, it's become a family tradition to come back here when we can. The experience has certainly changed over the years. When I last ate there, it was a sedate affair. You went in there, ordered, the chef came by with the duck and sliced it up for you. This time, there are guards helping you park the car, several hostesses in matching red dresses and white gloves, waiters in gold and black frog shirts, and even a steward in the bathroom handing you paper towels with tongs. I don't know if it was a gradual change to reflect the changing times, or a conscious decision to upgrade the experience, but I can tell everything has been revamped with Westernized marketing. There's a moment late in our meal, after we've already eaten half of it, when our waiter comes by and says, "let me explain briefly how the duck is prepared at Quanjude. The ducks are hand raised to 70-80 days, cooked for 60 minutes, until the color is golden brown and the skin is crisp." That's the sort of pump-up line that you wouldn't have heard in China in the past, at least not at the table.
Anyways, the food is great. We just order a 6-person set meal for the 6 of us. Among the appetizers are: duck liver (almost pate quality), fried duck hearts, and sliced duck gizzards. I liked all of those organ meats. The chef wheels his cart out and starts slicing up the duck. He expertly lays out slices of meat and also separates out the special bits of skin. These are places where most of the fat is rendered out and only a scaffold of tissue remains under the crispy skin. When you bite into it, it melts like a foam would. That's the specialty around which the whole experience is based, and that is certainly something that's hard to get right elsewhere. So the key dish is hoisin sauce, green onions, a dough wrap, and the slices of duck, put together like a burrito. In addition to that, some of the other main course dishes were duck soup (a side dish made in preparing the roast duck) a mushroom soup, a sea cucumber salad, and fried duck liver. The mushroom soup really stood out. There was no ginger, which I like, and an incredible extraction of mushroom flavor. The pictures should do this meal more justice.
After the whole meal was wrapped up, we give the leftovers to my cousin to keep and hop into the subway (another reason we ate at Quanjude -- it is very close to a subway station). We leave some gifts with Biao and are thus able to ditch a bag this way. Getting to the Beijing West train station was a bit arduous with all the stairs and luggage, but we eventually make it into the station and wait. After about 30 minutes, the harpy station announcer screeches out the call for the Lhasa train. They switch up at the last moment where they want people to file through, so there is a massive human wave rushing from one side of the hall to the other. My only complaint is that the station is not organized in any way to smooth out human traffic. There are some ridiculous bottlenecks that could be fixed, but probably costs too much. The station was also where I catch my first sighting of indoor spitting. It would be too much to hope for that that could have been civilized out of China so soon.
On the train, I really want to drop dead asleep, but there's some paperwork run by the conductor, as well as some important recorded announcements. The big thing about Lhasa is that it's very high elevation. Some people do not adjust well, even when the altitude increase is smoothed out by a train ride. So the train cars are equipped with oxygen outlets that people can use in an emergency. In addition, they'll start pumping in oxygen as part of the air conditioning. When that happens, people are not allowed to smoke on the train anymore. We'll see if that happens.
Two interesting alliterations I saw: The Killers: The Kai Le Si Band. I suppose actually translating The Killers would be a bit extreme. Citroen: Xue Tie Long, Snow Iron Dragon
The best Engrish: someone was wearing a shirt that read Qiaodan Basketball, in the Battlestar Galactica font. Qiaodan is the transliteration for Jordan.
9/2 and 9/3
9/2 5pm, EDT
I haven't written any sort of travelogue since I went back to China in 97. Even that was mostly backfilled from memory. This time, I've got a little netbook to write things down, ideally, the night that it happens. It'll let me spew the thoughts out freely and edit them down the road. The final version you get to read will be nice and cleaned up.
I've got adapters that are China-compatible, and a travel plug converter that should plug into Chinese sockets just fine. So when I am indoors and next to a socket, I'll try to charge this netbook up. No telling what the battery life is, so far.
I get into Logan and check in a bag. I was at 35 lbs before I packed in the two bottles of wine and whiskey for relatives and friends. The scale at the desk showed 45 lbs, which maybe was closer to 50 lbs than I was comfortable with. Man, the last time I traveled with serious luggage it was 78 lbs free per person.
As soon as I get out of the scanner I see two state troopers and an interpreter walling off some middle aged Hispanic man. Laid out on the desk before them was stacks of folded bills and various pills in bottles and ziploc bags. I'm sure it was all legal, as they were conducting the investigation right there, but what X-ray tech wouldn't flag that as it rolled by? As I put my shoes back on, I overhear one of the troopers saying the bills amounted to $10,000, for what the man claimed to be a one-month trip to -- I didn't catch where. The trooper was recommending that they tell the man to "about-face" out of the airport, without any hint that they'd arrest him or penalize him in any way.
So that's an anecdote to kick this trip off.
I'm not looking forward to the flight. 2 hours to Chicago, then god knows how long to Beijing. Probably 14, 15 hours. I brought two books to read. I figure I'll toss them if I finish them.
9/3 1am, EDT
We finally departed from Chicago. There was at least an hour delay as a thunderstorm hit just as we all had boarded. One thing I learned is that bigger airplanes have accessory ports every few rows for inverters, so you can use your laptop, etc. Look for a lightning bolt or the like next to the row numbers. I dunno how late we're gonna be. Looking forward to airline food.
And the feared right hand of The Greek from The Wire has some minor bit role in Curb Your Enthusiasm, in this episode I'm watching out of the pretty extensive in-flight entertainment. It's weird to see him.
I haven't written any sort of travelogue since I went back to China in 97. Even that was mostly backfilled from memory. This time, I've got a little netbook to write things down, ideally, the night that it happens. It'll let me spew the thoughts out freely and edit them down the road. The final version you get to read will be nice and cleaned up.
I've got adapters that are China-compatible, and a travel plug converter that should plug into Chinese sockets just fine. So when I am indoors and next to a socket, I'll try to charge this netbook up. No telling what the battery life is, so far.
I get into Logan and check in a bag. I was at 35 lbs before I packed in the two bottles of wine and whiskey for relatives and friends. The scale at the desk showed 45 lbs, which maybe was closer to 50 lbs than I was comfortable with. Man, the last time I traveled with serious luggage it was 78 lbs free per person.
As soon as I get out of the scanner I see two state troopers and an interpreter walling off some middle aged Hispanic man. Laid out on the desk before them was stacks of folded bills and various pills in bottles and ziploc bags. I'm sure it was all legal, as they were conducting the investigation right there, but what X-ray tech wouldn't flag that as it rolled by? As I put my shoes back on, I overhear one of the troopers saying the bills amounted to $10,000, for what the man claimed to be a one-month trip to -- I didn't catch where. The trooper was recommending that they tell the man to "about-face" out of the airport, without any hint that they'd arrest him or penalize him in any way.
So that's an anecdote to kick this trip off.
I'm not looking forward to the flight. 2 hours to Chicago, then god knows how long to Beijing. Probably 14, 15 hours. I brought two books to read. I figure I'll toss them if I finish them.
9/3 1am, EDT
We finally departed from Chicago. There was at least an hour delay as a thunderstorm hit just as we all had boarded. One thing I learned is that bigger airplanes have accessory ports every few rows for inverters, so you can use your laptop, etc. Look for a lightning bolt or the like next to the row numbers. I dunno how late we're gonna be. Looking forward to airline food.
And the feared right hand of The Greek from The Wire has some minor bit role in Curb Your Enthusiasm, in this episode I'm watching out of the pretty extensive in-flight entertainment. It's weird to see him.
China trip
I'm gonna be publishing a series of blog posts documenting my trips to China.
The format will be as follows:
Link to Picasa album for pictures on that day
Links to any videos from that day
Long journal post and commentary for that day's trip
Go ahead and subscribe now. I don't care.
The format will be as follows:
Link to Picasa album for pictures on that day
Links to any videos from that day
Long journal post and commentary for that day's trip
Go ahead and subscribe now. I don't care.
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