I took the train from Guilin to Kunming, then a bus northwest to DALI! But first, the last night I was in Yangshuo I went cormorant fishing - and I guess the old bird took a liking to me.
Dali is famous for its Bai people (one of the minority cultures in China), there are about 1.3 million of them living in the Dali area. I had the good fortune to attend a renactment of a Bai wedding, so much fun!
Apparently they have a tradition of ass-pinching the bride throughout the ceremony!
The Bai tea is amazing, we got to taste three cups at the ceremony - the first is bitter because when you're young you have to work hard, the second is sweet because after working you can enjoy the fruits of your labor, and the third is flavorful (like chai actually) because old age is full of memories. I bought some of each to bring home. This picture is the sweet one, there's milk and a bit of almond in it.
A giant medallion of TEA!!
In one of the Bai towns, you could walk around and poke your head into families' houses, which felt really weird, but we did it anyway.
These noodles were the best I've EVER had, hands down. There's actually 4 or 5 different types of noodles mixed in there, and the sauce is soy/chili. That's my second bowl.
They cut the yellow noodles from this big block which looks like cheese.
Silk worms sitting (festering?) in a basket in front of someone's house.
Couldn't wait to eat me some crayfish and bullfrog! Yep, they put them on skewers. there's grasshoppers there too if you zoom in.
On every street corner, in every park, behind every cash register people are playing Chinese chess or card games. There's a wonderful laid-back energy here, people don't feel like they have to pretend to be professional at all - though sometimes you do have to wake people up to pay for something.
And lastly - colorful chicks!!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
head west, young man - Dali, Yunnan Province
I took the train from Guilin to Kunming, then a bus northwest to DALI! But first, the last night I was in Yangshuo I went cormorant fishing - and I guess the old bird took a liking to me.
Dali is famous for its Bai people (one of the minority cultures in China), there are about 1.3 million of them living in the Dali area. I had the good fortune to attend a renactment of a Bai wedding, so much fun!
Apparently they have a tradition of ass-pinching the bride throughout the ceremony!
The Bai tea is amazing, we got to taste three cups at the ceremony - the first is bitter because when you're young you have to work hard, the second is sweet because after working you can enjoy the fruits of your labor, and the third is flavorful (like chai actually) because old age is full of memories. I bought some of each to bring home. This picture is the sweet one, there's milk and a bit of almond in it.
A giant medallion of TEA!!
In one of the Bai towns, you could walk around and poke your head into families' houses, which felt really weird, but we did it anyway.
These noodles were the best I've EVER had, hands down. There's actually 4 or 5 different types of noodles mixed in there, and the sauce is soy/chili. That's my second bowl.
They cut the yellow noodles from this big block which looks like cheese.
Silk worms sitting (festering?) in a basket in front of someone's house.
Couldn't wait to eat me some crayfish and bullfrog! Yep, they put them on skewers. There's grasshoppers there too if you zoom in.
On every street corner, in every park, behind every cash register people are playing Chinese chess or card games. There's a wonderful laid-back energy here, people don't feel like they have to pretend to be professional at all - though sometimes you do have to wake people up to pay for something.
And lastly - colorful chicks!!
Dali is famous for its Bai people (one of the minority cultures in China), there are about 1.3 million of them living in the Dali area. I had the good fortune to attend a renactment of a Bai wedding, so much fun!
Apparently they have a tradition of ass-pinching the bride throughout the ceremony!
The Bai tea is amazing, we got to taste three cups at the ceremony - the first is bitter because when you're young you have to work hard, the second is sweet because after working you can enjoy the fruits of your labor, and the third is flavorful (like chai actually) because old age is full of memories. I bought some of each to bring home. This picture is the sweet one, there's milk and a bit of almond in it.
A giant medallion of TEA!!
In one of the Bai towns, you could walk around and poke your head into families' houses, which felt really weird, but we did it anyway.
These noodles were the best I've EVER had, hands down. There's actually 4 or 5 different types of noodles mixed in there, and the sauce is soy/chili. That's my second bowl.
They cut the yellow noodles from this big block which looks like cheese.
Silk worms sitting (festering?) in a basket in front of someone's house.
Couldn't wait to eat me some crayfish and bullfrog! Yep, they put them on skewers. There's grasshoppers there too if you zoom in.
On every street corner, in every park, behind every cash register people are playing Chinese chess or card games. There's a wonderful laid-back energy here, people don't feel like they have to pretend to be professional at all - though sometimes you do have to wake people up to pay for something.
And lastly - colorful chicks!!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
lost in the mountains of Yangshuo
I've left the cities of Hong Kong and Guangzhou behind and traveled west to Guilin and down the Li River to YANGSHUO!, a little backpacker town with dozens of bike trails and villages in the surrounding countryside.
Buddhist carvings and a fisherman on a bamboo raft, in Guilin.
On the Li River cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo.
Hanging out with some Japanese moms on tour! They loved to hear me practice my terrible Japanese.
At the exact spot on the Li River that inspired the back of the 20 yuan bill (Chinese currency).
Biking in the countryside outside of Yangshuo, rice paddies and karst mountains.
My bike crosses the Yulong River, shut up, I know it's a girl's bike, it was cheaper. :P
I got a little lost on the wrong side amongst little village roads in the afternoon, and then I turned a corner and instead of just saying a friendly "ni hao" to me, the villagers started saying "Hello, bamboo boat!!" trying to sell me passage across the river, and lemme tell you, I've never been so happy to be pressured by touts. :) Thought I might not be able to reach Yangshuo in time for the night show, but this raftsman saved me.
That night I went to the Impressions Yangshuo night show, which is a music, dance, and light show performed right on the Li River in bamboo boats - absolutely stunning. The director also did the Beijing 2008 opening show for the Olympic games.
I met a professor at a local university who was interested in practicing his English and hung out with him and his friend and climbed one of the local mountains. And we umm ... pretended we were King Kong?
They were amazing ... and they treated me to "beer fish", a local specialty.
It's weird not to see a convenience store. Even in the most rural parts I traveled to in Korea or Japan there was always a 7-11 or a FamilyMart nearby - here, they still have them, but they're small family-run stores (one was actually called "Small Store") and you have to act horrified when they overcharge you for a bottle of water so they'll lower the price. Ohhh how they love fleecing tourists.
I'm really used to uploading all my pictures all at once to Flickr and it's strange to have to choose the best ones. I'm uploading 24 right now, and it looks like it's going to take about an hour or so. Hope you guys enjoy them, more to come! Tonight I'm going to join some fishermen on a cormorant fishing tour (the cormorant birds actually go underwater and catch the fish and bring them back to the boat!) and then tomorrow night I'll be taking the overnight train to Kunming in Yunnan province, then onward to Dali City and Lijiang in the foothills of Tibet.
Buddhist carvings and a fisherman on a bamboo raft, in Guilin.
On the Li River cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo.
Hanging out with some Japanese moms on tour! They loved to hear me practice my terrible Japanese.
At the exact spot on the Li River that inspired the back of the 20 yuan bill (Chinese currency).
Biking in the countryside outside of Yangshuo, rice paddies and karst mountains.
My bike crosses the Yulong River, shut up, I know it's a girl's bike, it was cheaper. :P
I got a little lost on the wrong side amongst little village roads in the afternoon, and then I turned a corner and instead of just saying a friendly "ni hao" to me, the villagers started saying "Hello, bamboo boat!!" trying to sell me passage across the river, and lemme tell you, I've never been so happy to be pressured by touts. :) Thought I might not be able to reach Yangshuo in time for the night show, but this raftsman saved me.
That night I went to the Impressions Yangshuo night show, which is a music, dance, and light show performed right on the Li River in bamboo boats - absolutely stunning. The director also did the Beijing 2008 opening show for the Olympic games.
I met a professor at a local university who was interested in practicing his English and hung out with him and his friend and climbed one of the local mountains. And we umm ... pretended we were King Kong?
They were amazing ... and they treated me to "beer fish", a local specialty.
It's weird not to see a convenience store. Even in the most rural parts I traveled to in Korea or Japan there was always a 7-11 or a FamilyMart nearby - here, they still have them, but they're small family-run stores (one was actually called "Small Store") and you have to act horrified when they overcharge you for a bottle of water so they'll lower the price. Ohhh how they love fleecing tourists.
I'm really used to uploading all my pictures all at once to Flickr and it's strange to have to choose the best ones. I'm uploading 24 right now, and it looks like it's going to take about an hour or so. Hope you guys enjoy them, more to come! Tonight I'm going to join some fishermen on a cormorant fishing tour (the cormorant birds actually go underwater and catch the fish and bring them back to the boat!) and then tomorrow night I'll be taking the overnight train to Kunming in Yunnan province, then onward to Dali City and Lijiang in the foothills of Tibet.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
fast times at the Guangzhou train station
Lonely Planet China describes the main train station in Guangzhou as anarchic, seething mass of humanity, so on my way I prepared myself for the worst. What greeted me when I arrived was not what I expected. I expected a train station - seething or not, I expected it to be ... indoors. As I walked up the stairs from the subway station, the first thing I saw was people just sitting around everywhere, with their bags all around them. And then I turned the corner, and saw that an entire football field size square was filled with people. They appeared to be forming long lines, just to get in the station. I got in one of them, but after a few minutes I got close enough to see that the main at the front of the line was checking tickets. Which I didn't have. My plan was to get to the station and try to figure out how to buy a ticket, but now it appeared that I couldn't enter the station without a ticket?! The old Catch-22. I started looking around for clues.
A large neon sign in Chinese pointed further down the road. I wondered if it meant "tickets thataway"? I looked up the word for tickets in the Lonely Planet book and sure enough, one of the symbols matched up - piao! It's pyo in Korean, easy to remember. Got on over there - it was a separate building entirely - only to be greeting with about 30 lines of people, each about 30 people deep. I got in one. And it was at that moment that I realized that out of all the people waiting to buy tickets, all the people getting on their trains or waiting outside, I was the ONLY foreigner. Well, well.
Long lines can be frustrating I guess, but they are a truly wonderful thing for a person who has been in China for just a little over an hour, and has no idea what he's going to say when he gets to the front of that line. I thumbed through my Lonely Planet's phrase section, trying to think of possible lines of conversation. My previous strategy of opening up the book to a page where Guilin - my destination city - was writting in large enough print in Chinese to be read over a ticket counter, wasn't going to cut it here. I tried that first at an information desk before I got up to the train station / giant square / picnic area, and sensing my weakness, a Chinese man pushed past me, completely INTO the little window in the glass separating us from the info guy, and shoved money at the ticket man for Lord knows what purpose. No, I needed to control this conversation. So I practiced. "Wo yao qu Guilin", I want to go to Guilin, under my breathe, over and over again. I memorized it. Okay what could go wrong? What if the train's booked for today? I looked up the word for today and tomorrow. The guy behind me was already fidgeting his bags and making little frustrated snorting noises, no doubt anticipating the avalanche of awkwardness the foreigner ahead of him was bound to unleash. As I mouthed phrases, I imagined he was mentally preparing his best money shove maneuvers. But I was gonna be ready for this guy.
Just then, the line surged ahead as a family of six got their tickets, and I was close enough to hear bits of the conversation with the customer just ahead of me. I couldn't hear what he said, but I could make out the ticket lady say "may-oh" which I remembered from my Mandarin podcasts as the absolute kiss of death. "There isn't any", or "I don't have any" is basically what it means. And it hit me - not surprising, right? There were easily over 500 people getting tickets with me RIGHT NOW, and that was just this instant. Was it always like this? Had I stumbled in during ticket rush hour? How were we all going to fit on trains together? Who knows. But the guy in front of me got some kind of ticket at any rate, and it was finally my turn. What was the word for "tomorrow" again??
Time slowed down. Control the conversation!
"Wo yao qu Guilin."
"Jintian?"
I know that one, it means today! I nodded and she pointed at the computer screen which showed the time of the train's departure at 18:04, the overnight train which I wanted, and the price of 215 yuan (380 was the price a ticket agency had tried to rip me off with early that day!). I gave her the money, she gave me the ticket. No problem! I turned around and headed out of the building, past the lines and people who looked a little surprised that they didn't get to see a funny foreigner show. Thanks Lonely Planet!! I realize all of that could have been a very long Lonely Planet commercial. :)
I expected China to be pretty much what I encountered at the train station - disorganized, dissheveled, out of control and reined in by the authorities (those lines outside were bordered by fences and patrolled by policemen), and smelly. Public toilets are often just ditches built into the floor overflowing with - well you get the idea, they don't look or smell like they're EVER cleaned. But that's where the "backwards" China ends. Walking around the streets, I see nothing but people with expensive looking handbags, fashionable clothes, fast food restaurants, ice cream shops, everything you'd expect to see anywhere in the developed world. The internet cafe I'm sitting in right now has a lightning fast computer w/ webcam, big red executive chairs, and everyone's playing Counterstrike and World of Warcraft around me and watching pirated movies while Chinese hiphop and American dance music plays in the background. But then again, people spit out food right onto the table while they're eating (nope, no napkins). They throw boiled eggs at monkeys at the zoo (saw that today - so sad!! the monkey was happy though) and they throw their trash on the ground EVERYwhere. As an American, its so strange that these two kinds of things exist together - but hey, that's just my perspective I guess. People say that China's going to be modern in the next couple of years, but - disregarding those things I mentioned - China is modern RIGHT NOW.
Pictures will follow - the computer I was using in Hong Kong was super slow and crashed in the middle of a picture upload, and this one won't recognize my camera for some reason. Tomorrow I'm taking a riverboat cruise down the river Li and staying in Yangshuo for a few days, hopefully I'll find a better computer there.
A large neon sign in Chinese pointed further down the road. I wondered if it meant "tickets thataway"? I looked up the word for tickets in the Lonely Planet book and sure enough, one of the symbols matched up - piao! It's pyo in Korean, easy to remember. Got on over there - it was a separate building entirely - only to be greeting with about 30 lines of people, each about 30 people deep. I got in one. And it was at that moment that I realized that out of all the people waiting to buy tickets, all the people getting on their trains or waiting outside, I was the ONLY foreigner. Well, well.
Long lines can be frustrating I guess, but they are a truly wonderful thing for a person who has been in China for just a little over an hour, and has no idea what he's going to say when he gets to the front of that line. I thumbed through my Lonely Planet's phrase section, trying to think of possible lines of conversation. My previous strategy of opening up the book to a page where Guilin - my destination city - was writting in large enough print in Chinese to be read over a ticket counter, wasn't going to cut it here. I tried that first at an information desk before I got up to the train station / giant square / picnic area, and sensing my weakness, a Chinese man pushed past me, completely INTO the little window in the glass separating us from the info guy, and shoved money at the ticket man for Lord knows what purpose. No, I needed to control this conversation. So I practiced. "Wo yao qu Guilin", I want to go to Guilin, under my breathe, over and over again. I memorized it. Okay what could go wrong? What if the train's booked for today? I looked up the word for today and tomorrow. The guy behind me was already fidgeting his bags and making little frustrated snorting noises, no doubt anticipating the avalanche of awkwardness the foreigner ahead of him was bound to unleash. As I mouthed phrases, I imagined he was mentally preparing his best money shove maneuvers. But I was gonna be ready for this guy.
Just then, the line surged ahead as a family of six got their tickets, and I was close enough to hear bits of the conversation with the customer just ahead of me. I couldn't hear what he said, but I could make out the ticket lady say "may-oh" which I remembered from my Mandarin podcasts as the absolute kiss of death. "There isn't any", or "I don't have any" is basically what it means. And it hit me - not surprising, right? There were easily over 500 people getting tickets with me RIGHT NOW, and that was just this instant. Was it always like this? Had I stumbled in during ticket rush hour? How were we all going to fit on trains together? Who knows. But the guy in front of me got some kind of ticket at any rate, and it was finally my turn. What was the word for "tomorrow" again??
Time slowed down. Control the conversation!
"Wo yao qu Guilin."
"Jintian?"
I know that one, it means today! I nodded and she pointed at the computer screen which showed the time of the train's departure at 18:04, the overnight train which I wanted, and the price of 215 yuan (380 was the price a ticket agency had tried to rip me off with early that day!). I gave her the money, she gave me the ticket. No problem! I turned around and headed out of the building, past the lines and people who looked a little surprised that they didn't get to see a funny foreigner show. Thanks Lonely Planet!! I realize all of that could have been a very long Lonely Planet commercial. :)
I expected China to be pretty much what I encountered at the train station - disorganized, dissheveled, out of control and reined in by the authorities (those lines outside were bordered by fences and patrolled by policemen), and smelly. Public toilets are often just ditches built into the floor overflowing with - well you get the idea, they don't look or smell like they're EVER cleaned. But that's where the "backwards" China ends. Walking around the streets, I see nothing but people with expensive looking handbags, fashionable clothes, fast food restaurants, ice cream shops, everything you'd expect to see anywhere in the developed world. The internet cafe I'm sitting in right now has a lightning fast computer w/ webcam, big red executive chairs, and everyone's playing Counterstrike and World of Warcraft around me and watching pirated movies while Chinese hiphop and American dance music plays in the background. But then again, people spit out food right onto the table while they're eating (nope, no napkins). They throw boiled eggs at monkeys at the zoo (saw that today - so sad!! the monkey was happy though) and they throw their trash on the ground EVERYwhere. As an American, its so strange that these two kinds of things exist together - but hey, that's just my perspective I guess. People say that China's going to be modern in the next couple of years, but - disregarding those things I mentioned - China is modern RIGHT NOW.
Pictures will follow - the computer I was using in Hong Kong was super slow and crashed in the middle of a picture upload, and this one won't recognize my camera for some reason. Tomorrow I'm taking a riverboat cruise down the river Li and staying in Yangshuo for a few days, hopefully I'll find a better computer there.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
off to China
Tonight, I'll be gathering my things and heading out to Boston, to the airport, for a flight to Hong Kong and then onward to southern China. To say that I'm excited would be like giving a little kid a hundred extra Christmas presents one year, and saying that he was 'pretty happy'. I'm speechless.
This past weekend was my last weekend in Boston for a little while. Since it was almost Lauren's birthday as well, we had a little pre-birthday dinner for her at Fajitas and Ritas in Boston.
The "Ritas" stands for .... margaritas. :-D
In accordance with the prophecy, we also made it down to Hong Kong (the bar in Boston, not the city...)
Totem pole!
Suzanne and Andrea invented some new kinds of dance ...
And the dancing lasted all the way to the subway station. I'll miss you guys. <3
I'll be back in Boston on August 14th, but expect quite a few posts here in the meantime. My first mission - spicy Southern Chinese cuisine! I hear they eat snake??
This past weekend was my last weekend in Boston for a little while. Since it was almost Lauren's birthday as well, we had a little pre-birthday dinner for her at Fajitas and Ritas in Boston.
The "Ritas" stands for .... margaritas. :-D
In accordance with the prophecy, we also made it down to Hong Kong (the bar in Boston, not the city...)
Totem pole!
Suzanne and Andrea invented some new kinds of dance ...
And the dancing lasted all the way to the subway station. I'll miss you guys. <3
I'll be back in Boston on August 14th, but expect quite a few posts here in the meantime. My first mission - spicy Southern Chinese cuisine! I hear they eat snake??
Monday, April 06, 2009
boogie out in Iowa
Last week I went to Iowa to visit my grandmother, my aunt and uncle, and my cousin. I took the Greyhound bus, which ended up being about two days' journey each way, but it wasn't all that bad. Most of the way I got my own seat. Ended up learning some Chinese from a guy heading out to Chicago, and played some chess in the bus station in Pittsburgh. Plus, I got to see the sunrise.
I stayed at my grandma's place, where she fed me home-made granola and all kinds of delicious things. Hung out a lot with my little cousin J.D., who is one of the coolest guys I've met in a while. Played Settlers of Catan, he showed me some crazy computer games, a very sweet time.
We all went out for Japanese/Korean.
SPICY !!
So good to see family, I'm really going to miss them.
I stayed at my grandma's place, where she fed me home-made granola and all kinds of delicious things. Hung out a lot with my little cousin J.D., who is one of the coolest guys I've met in a while. Played Settlers of Catan, he showed me some crazy computer games, a very sweet time.
We all went out for Japanese/Korean.
SPICY !!
So good to see family, I'm really going to miss them.
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