Xi'an, China - snake wine, warriors, Muslims

Xi'an, near the center of China, is steeped in history as well as, at least when I was visiting, near monsoon-caliber rains. Though of course, I did get out to see the Terra Cotta Warriors.



It's very difficult to capture in a picture the size and grandeur of this place. You can walk around the outside of the complex, which resembles a giant stadium, and look down on the the warriors inside. There are some places where you can get a closer look.



The Emperor Qin Shi Huang (around 210 BCE) constructed these warriors and had them placed in his future tomb, so that he'd have an army even in the afterlife. Quite soon after they were built, the emperor who ordered their construction died. Not surprisingly, the peasants soon revolted and ended up looting the tombs and smashing all the Terra Cotta Warriors they could find. Some survived, most did not, and almost all that are on display now had to be pieced together from parts.



Not all the warriors were locked up in pits, however. Some had made it out to local bars and hostels in Xi'an - there was one Terra Cotta head in our hostel bar, who gratefully accepted a beer when I offered it. He must have been thirsty surviving for over 2,000 years (not to mention being made of dirt).



Also in that hostel bar was a very interesting jug of ... pickled animals?? Upon closer inspection:



There was a very visible turtle in there as well, don't know why it wasn't mentioned on the list. :P The bartender told us it was medicinal baiju (Chinese liquor). What with the rainy weather, a few guys and I thought it would be a good idea, for the sake of our health, to take a shot. Mmmm ... just what the doctor ordered!



The next day, all rested from my medicine the night before, headed out to explore the Muslim quarter of Xi'an. It was my first visit ever to a mosque.



This one was, to be expected, very Chinese in style - it was very interesting to see the juxtaposition of Muslim and Chinese architecture, Muslim and Chinese writing everywhere.







Also in the mosque, saw an amazing tree!



Next stop - Beijing!

Tiger Leaping Gorge

I know this might seem a little out of order, but I'm doing a little retrospective of my Chinese trip, since I didn't have the bandwidth to blog about it in China.

Tiger Leaping Gorge! The place is as cool as the name sounds. The Yangtze River flows at the base of the gorge, which is the third longest in the world and spills out eventually into the Pacific at Shanghai. According to local legend, there's a rock in the gorge which sticks out over the river, and long long ago a tiger once jumped from one side of the river to the other, from that rock. Didn't see the rock, but I see a whole lot of other breathtaking sights.



Right after I started the hike I was closely followed by a man on a ... is that a mule? I think so. He didn't say much, and my little attempts at Chinese conversation were just met with a smile. It was creepy how close he stayed behind me, stopping when I stopped, but talking with other travelers I discovered that these locals are eager to step in and offer assistance to weary / injured travelers on the trail (for a price of course). They're not highway robbers.



Huzzah! Note to self - leave the heavy bag at the hostel at the trail head next time, and take a day pack.



I met up with a couple of Koreans on the trail who were great company (and I got to practice my Korean!) They told me w/ some guilt about how they lied to their children and left them w/ grandparents before coming on this trip to China. Hey, you gotta get out of the house somehow! Here they are looking out on the gorge.



This was the place I stayed at, close to the half-way point on the trek - 茶馬 "cha-ma" meaning "tea horse". It was amazing, I've never stayed at a guest house on a mountain before. We all ate together - the trekkers who crashed there that night - and I felt bad that I was feeling so sick, it was hard to leave the good conversation.



Sunrise at the guesthouse was glorious but late (maybe 9:00?), since the sun was behind the mountains.



Found a Tibetan temple close to the end of the hike (Tiger Leaping Gorge is fairly close to the Tibetan border and there are a lot of ethnic Tibetans in the area).





Definitely one of the highlights of my trip, maybe someday I can go back when I'm in better health!

arrived in jeju & busy & lazy

Well I've arrived here in Jeju, South Korea, it's been ages since I updated things here on Teadiaries, mostly because I was busy trying to fit as much tourist-time as I could in Beijing and Tianjin and then when I arrived in Jeju I've just been - lazy. Yep, no excuses. :-D

I took a lot of pictures in China, over 1600 it looks like, I'll be going through them in the next week or so. And I've got almost as many stories to tell, I think. I went through a notebook and a half of journaling, jotting down Chinese phrases, shopping lists, random stuff on the street - all kinds of junk. I can't wait to go through it, and put some of it up here. But for now, let me start where I left off ...

From Dali I journeyed north to Lijiang, the "must-see backpacker mecca" of Yunnan Province. Lijiang is a difficult city to describe, probably because I didn't see too much of the modern city. The "old city" of Lijiang is a maze of cobbled streets, incomprehensible maps, and absolutely no cars. It's glorious and strange at the same time. My first morning in Lijiang I suddenly couldn't eat anything (and for those of you who know me, you know how out of character THAT is. ^^ In this tourist, no car dreamworld, there were no pharmacies, no convenience stores, and a 15 minute walk to a taxi to take me to any of those places. And considering that I didn't know what was wrong with me, or how to explain it in Chinese, I mostly stayed within my cobblestoned paradise. The picture below is from the main square in the Old Town, it was so hard to navigate around, but I DID know that the street which lay between the "Octopus Pill" shop and the "Dried Meat Yak" shop (zoom into the pic to see the names) was my way back to the hostel. Before you say "oh hey look there's a car" - that was a police van, he was seriously the only one I swear. :)



Met a Korean couple and two Korean students on a hike and we roamed all over together (and they actually gave me some medicine as well!).



At one point I got trapped down a well.



Lijiang is famous for its water canals, running all over the Old City. On the restaurant boulevard, I met a very photogenic cat.



And of course I had a cup of tea (ginseng), at a tea shop which overlooks the traditional roofs of the Old City.



My last night in Lijiang, weak from not eating, I realized as I stepped out of the internet cafe that it was in fact Friday night, and the city was alive. Sick as I was, I pulled out my camera and lurched around the streets, feeling like Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing, caught up in the carnival of lights and sounds.



Despite my sickness, whatever it was, while I was in Lijiang I took the bus out to Tiger Leaping Gorge and did an overnight trek - more on that next time!

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!!

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!!

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.

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.