The Beat of Coal

Shanxi province is coal country. Fallout from the coal industry here in Shanxi is not too different from much of what I have seen scattered throughout China, here, there is just more of it. I have moved north from Xi'an to Pingyao to Yuncheng and now Datong. It's a dry, dusty, poor province running along the windward side of the Taihang mountains and 'there be coal'. It seems to be everywhere, just lying about. You can walk around through towns or fields and it's scattered here and there as if part of the natural ground cover. What is most disturbing, and this is true for nearly all the rural towns I have visited, is the everyday use of coal by individuals. It is used for heating and cooking. If you are in a fairly confined space when they are burning it for the above reasons, it is quite noxious. Sitting in guesthouses or small restaurants when they are using it, I have actually gotten light-headed and leave feeling a little crappy. Walking around the poorer towns there are piles of coal around every corner. People just come scoop a shovel full up when they need it. And if you are near a plant burning it for power, you can smell the same fumes. Atleast most of the harmful by-products of coal burning in more developed countries is scrubbed. Here, CO2 emissions seems like a lesser concern on the backdrop of the heavy metal, carcinogenic and ozone-depleting compounds purged into the air. It is no wonder that most Chinese people in the poorer cities are always coughing, hacking and spitting. I'm no statistician, but as I understand it life expectancy trends with the development of a country. Considering that prior to the industrial age the Chinese had a relatively high life expectancy, it would be interesting to see if life expectancy decreases here as industrialization marches on. Oh, did I mention they smoke like chimneys. They could put the Europeans to shame. RJ Reynolds really should consider setting up some factories in China.

Ok, so despite all that grimness, I have actually found some cool stuff in Shanxi hiding behind all those mountains of coal. I wrote about the near street carnival-like atmosphere of the food vendors on Yuncheng. Pingyao was also quite a treat. The inner, old city is surround by an ancient city wall. This section is only about 1.5 sq miles and is geared more towards tourists. But there are only a few main drags selling tourist wears. Break from these and it becomes a twisting maze of small alleys that feels entirely local and real. Vehicles are few within the city walls and you feel like you are stepping back in time. I spent hours and hours wandering around stealing pictures left and right. Outside the walls, where I saw no tourist venture, it is a lot like Yuncheng - dirty and dusty, but lively. Making for good walking.
I day-tripped out of Pingyao via a couple bus connections to the Wang Family Courtyard House. Using my usual method of writing down the characters of the place I wanted to go, the bus driver dropped me off in a town I had not heard of, leaving me a little confused. Fortunately, there was one Chinese women with giant camera in tow that was also going to the house. She didn't speak any english, but the bus driver motioned for me to follow her. I felt a little like a lost puppy, but I'm glad I followed her for the near mile walk - I would not have found the house otherwise. Apparently the Wang family has had significant success in Shanxi province with history in the region stretching back over 700 years. The house was outside the standard Taoist and Buddhist style in China and resembled something more along the lines of a castle, with outer walls higher than most walled cities I have visited. It was an extensive 'house' with several courtyards and winding alleys. Many of the rooms were furnished to give you a glimpse of what it looked like. It reminded me a lot of touring the Biltmore house in Asheville, built by the Vanderbilts. However, I had to cut the trip short and only got to see about half of it. Having had lost my proxy 'mom' I had no idea when or where my return bus would be, or even if there was one. After some waiting, walking and gesturing I finally caught the bus and made it back to Pingyao in time for my overnight train to Datong. The Wang House was a nice escape from much of the standard architecture I have seen in China. Also, getting off the beaten path and hitting the small coal towns along the way was a treat all its own too. The real, albeit unexpected, highlight was catching the tail end of a percussion and symbol band in one of the towns while hunting for my bus. The video is a little crappy, as I was standing in the middle of the road, but go ahead and crank it up - it kicks in about half way through. Also, you can only hear it at the end, but the car alarms were going off left and right.

Temple Burnout

I have been hitting the tourist sites hard lately and upon an unforseen turn of events this morning I rashly turned my heels on Xi'an and got the hell out of dodge. Two plus weeks of busy cities and heavly touristed "must-sees" has burned my fuse short. I like seeing great historical and artistic venues and accept the fact that so does everyone else. Marauding crowds are the hidden cost in an admission ticket. Knowing I needed an escape last night I planned a trip to Taibai mountain a couple hours outside Xi'an. It's a 3700 m mountain whose precipice I knew would hit the reset button. I got up early to catch the only bus of the day to the mountain. Despite the beautiful weather I was the only person going on the bus and it thus got cancelled. I quickly found a bus to Hua Shan mountain which promises fantastic scenery. However, it became apparent that that was also the direction floods of tourists were heading. With iPods and cell phones a-blaring, I pulled the plug and got off the bus before it left the station. As if it were divine intervention, the original Taibai bus driver motions for me to get back on the bus and in broken english said he is now going to Taibai - pending a 6.5 hour detour to Famen Temple. Well, it was 'intervention' all right, but I don't know about 'divine'.

Needless to say, I am now in Yuncheng. It was only a couple hours away and my guidebook dedictes all of three sentences to it essentially saying it is an obscure part of 'rural' China that is worth a stop. Well, I got what I wanted. I don't think a tourist has ever purposely stopped here. I am getting the quizzical 'what the hell are you doing here?' looks again. Now, apparently my definition of rural is slightly different than my guidebook's; or rather should I say, completely opposite. It's a busy, dirty city - but there are no bands of tourists with bright-pink matching baseball caps!! After three-attempts to purchase a train ticket for tomorrow (one of the downsides of obscurity I guess) I took to wandering the streets. And I have to say, I was quite pleased. I stumbled upon several blocks of food vendors all with mobile cooking carts, stackable stools and folding tables. They overtook the sidewalks and reduced the four lane road down to a one lane snaking path in what seemed like an effort to feed the whole town. Well, you guessed it - I stuffed my face. It was awesome. Amazingly, with hundreds of stalls, I saw very little of the same thing. My personal favorite: an 18-inch wrap of sorts cooked with egg and filled with cilantro, chives, lettuce, fried crispy thing and somesort of spicy sauce. I topped off my two dinners with ice cream, a haircut, a beer and a basketball size bag of freshly made caramelized popcorn all for under $4.50. This was the escape I needed. Tomorrow, Pingyao.

18th Final Four Appearance.

GO HEELS!

The Uplifting Massacre

Nanjing is much like the nearby cities hugging the mouth of the Yangzi river - clean, smart, organized, etc. But it does have a few unique identifiers for better or for worse. Like many other Chinese cities (that I had not visited at this point), it is surrounded by a large wall that is 33km long, ~40 ft high and 25 ft wide at that top - the best part: ~70% is still intact and you can walk bits of it. So of course, I did that. The city also contains a large lake with pathways and bridges and causeways cutting across it that all make for nice respite from the city clamor.

On one of the islands connected to the city by a causeway there is an aviary claiming to have China's largest collection of birds in their "natural habitat." The posted sign used several other bold statements like this claiming that this aviary had the most number of species, the most number of birds, the best facilities, etc. Which I have to mention at this point seems to be a running theme with nearly all the attractions I visit in China from museums to temples to archealogical sites - they all claim to be the best, but offer little information to back such claims. And while in some cases I agree (e.g.,"yes, this is the most number of steps I have ever seen leading up to a temple"), most times I just am left with the assumption that there must not be any system of accountability in place. I, however, do not think most of these boastful statements are intentful efforts to mislead, I think most Chinese are just very proud. But I'll save that for another blog entry. Back to the aviary: Well, if I haven't given away the punchline already, it was a little bit of a let down - or alternatively, every other aviary in the world just really does suck. In addition, it was also a little bit sad. A giant circus tent made of netting covers a hard-packed ground broken only by a few trees and an odd collection of birds who I just do not imagine cohabitating: mallards, peacocks, ostrich-like creature, spoonbills, etc (don't hold me to these names, I am not a bird guy). It was cool to walk among these birds, but like I said: odd, sad and definitely not the best. Also near the lake is Zijin mountain overlooking the city. After getting up there to check out the views I did my normal strolling about the city. Which is, by the way, were I found those awesome dumplings I talked about a few posts ago. Oh, and the night scene is pretty near - very busy and tons of lights in trees, along the canals, on temples, etc.

While Nanjing was a nice place to visit, for me, there was really only one thing that truly set it apart from these other Yangzi river cities - The Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre. I know, I know, it sounds morbid, but give me a second. It is basically a memorial with two functions: to commerate the 300,000 chinese victims ruthlessly murdered by the Japanese in a 6 week blitz in 1937 and to offer a peaceful way forward. It is quite an extensive exhibit broken up in to several main sections. You start off with a very thorough, thorough, thorough recount of the massacre and the events leading up to it in a museum/archive. The museum then commerates those who reported the incident and testified in War Crimes courts and catalogs the names of all those recorded to have died. From here you exit out into several sections of the memorial that would probably bore the crap out of you for me to describe in detail. So basically, in a nutshell, you follow a path of rememberance to reconciliation. What really struck a chord with me was the unique and modern artisitic works within the memorial. So far, all the artistic works I have seen in China have been limited to pottery, bronze work, coinage, funerary works, scrolls, calligraphy, Buddhist and Taoist statues and structures. They are all great in their own right, but they are all atleast 1000 - 9000 years old. Nearly everything hence forth seems to be a reproduction of 'the glory days'. I have sought out modern and contemperary art galleries and around each corner find myself sorely dissappointed. In contrast, the Nanjing memorial is incredibly invigorating. Initially, they use monotone colors, horizontal desolate space and large stone block elements to create weight and solitude. As you proceed through the memorial, they transition these elements to more vertical, light colored elements that lift you from the sense of despair they initially created. Kudos to the artists: it is an effective memorial that uses size and scope to assure you that it is possible to move forward after such a horrific event. I am sure all this comes across as a bit pretentious, but it truly is a unique piece of modern art that I find to be unparalled in China admidst the slew of glory day relics. If you are ever in the Shanghai greater area, take the 2 hour train ride out to Nanjing to see this - but go see all those relics first.

Technically, Shanghai is Communist Too...

I'll cut to the chase with a preface: Shanghai was a blast!

While in Shanghai, it rarely registered with me that I was in China . Anybody could step fresh off the boat, and with some cash in their pocket, make a fine time of this place. Equally so, if you are short on cash, keep sailing. It nonetheless is a part of China that must be experienced to understand China - atleast where it is going. It is a fast-paced city where you can find whatever your heart desires, whenever it is desired. A visit to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall allows for an eye-popping experience by marveling at the 'before', 'after' and 'soon-to-be' states of the city. Series of before/after pictures that cover less than a 10 year window are staggering. The exhibition placed much emphasis on the develpment site for the World Expo here next year - they are basically building another city. Most impressive though was the 35 x 75 ft model of the city with a raised platform surrounding it for viewing. Awe-inspiring and depressing, all at the same time.

As long as you avoid Nanjing road (the tourist trap -"you want DVD? Watch? Lady-massage? Umbrella? Picture-takey?"), Shanghai is a lot of fun to walk. The Bund is a large river promenade area, and my personal favorite, the poor, back-alleys of the old town. A tight network of little streets with tons of markets and cheap food vendors spilling from crumbling buildings all nestled amid towering high rises. The Shanghai Museum is a definite plus! A four-story collection of some of the finest pieces of Chinese scrolls, statuary, seals, bronze and pottery that I have yet to see, all presented with style and in english! Unfortunately, I can not speak so highly of the Shanghai Art Museum. The works were displayed well, but the contemporary work just didn't do anything for me - 'each his own' I guess. Independent of Shanghai, I also was able to meet up with a current BASF (my future employer) employee of 20 years who handles the paints and coatings accounts for SE Asia. He was able to offer a lot of perspective on the company that I have yet to be exposed too. It was a pleasant two hours and he was kind enough to pick up the $60 cappuccino bill (yikes!).While encountering western-life has been a little lacking for me in China, I got my fill in Shanghai. The hostel was a great setup with many travelers - Asian and Western alike. I met back up with an Austrian, Tobi, whom I crossed paths with back in Wudang Shan. We united with a german friend of his to form 'Team Love' on a Saturday night 'Metro Run' - a three hour treasure hunt in Shanghai centered around making expedicious use of the metro. While digging through a pile of cheap hats in a metro station, the only 3 matching hats we could find had the word 'love' written on it in glitter - it won the award for tacky and we had to buy them, hence 'Team Love'. Of about 40 teams of varying size, we came in second! Placement is based upon finding things, getting stamps, performing tasks, etc. But in reality, it's an excuse for socializing. Following the treasure hunt, we proceeded to go to the clubs. The Shanghai nightlife is quite intense and goes til the sun comes up - reminded me alot of Barcelona. Overall, I met of a lot of people and had an all around great time!
It was a fairly sleepless weekend as I got back from the metro run around 6:30 am. A couple hours later I was trying to make as much of Shanghai as possible. I did a little walking and also was able to grab coffee with a real interesting German girl studying for a year in Dalian, near Beijing. If I get time, I hope to swing by and meet her before I depart - she tells me of a good brewery there! After coffee I was able to find 'The Koreans' (the ones I met in Suzhou) in time for the hash. It was held out near the development area for the World Expo. It was a really nice group, mostly expats though with little Chinese representaion. The run was a nice medium distance run through rundown neighborhoods and construction areas with a little mud thrown in - my kind of hash! Interesting people too! Turns out there was a couple there, residents of Shanghai of 8 years, who were from Cary NC and still have a house there. I was really blown away when the husband put on his Carolina Brewery Company hat - one of my favorite breweries in NC. He was one of the original investors in the CBC and is close friends with the owner - small world! Nearly the whole group stayed for a couple hours after for the buffet and beers. The Koreans, who I seriously think have never run a day in their life, loved it and are hoping to find a hash back in Seoul - they even bought hash t-shirts!

I did a little more sightseeing monday and then caught the train to Nanjing. I have been walking Nanjing all day (beautiul weather) and I'm dead tired, so I will write about Nanjing later. I will try to keep the blog more updated. Once again, I blame Shanghai.

GO HEELS!

The Dynamic Dumpling

No two dumplings are created equal. In every province I have visited so far I have found them, eaten them hand over fist and realized there are a lot of takes on the traditional dumpling. I love these things and have walked hours looking for the perfect dumpling joint. As there are no signs that say "Hey, American! Come over here, we have dumplings!" I am relegated to looking for the clues - or someone shoving else them in their mouth. I have learned what I thought was the Chinese word for 'dumpling' but when I exercise it, all I get is confused looks - I suck at Chinese. However, I have gotten pretty good at scoping out the stands for steamed dumplings. Seventy-five pricent of the time they are in stacked bamboo baskets of 10 inch diameters - any bigger and it's these partially cooked doughy things that I end up throwing away. The dumplings are either, steamed, boiled or fried and stuffed with various meats or veggies. You would assume they are all pretty much the same, but after awhile I start to feel like Bubba in Forrest Gump describing shrimp dishes. Anyway, this morning was a "top-3" dumpling breakfast in Nanjing and I can't get them off my mind so I thought I would purge a little bit on the blog.

So as for my whereabouts: I am in Nanjing now and this is the first opportunity I have had to send out the update - all I can say is that it was Shanghai's fault - I swear. But before I get to that - Suzhou! This region around the mouth of the Yangzi river in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces is fairly well-to-do. Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing and Shanghai are similar in many ways - clean, friendly, lots of english, great transportation, lots of westerners and, in general, quite different than the previous, more inland places I have visited. The people too are different. While the Chinese in general are incredibly fashion-conscious, this region is the penultimate (so far). Additionally, the dialects here are softer and not as abbrasive while 'yelling' is not part of normal discourse. While pushing (on sidewalks, in lines, boarding trains, etc.) is still acceptable, spitting and public urination is much less prevalent.

As for Suzhou itself, it is apparently often compared to Hangzhou. Marco Polo claimed it was the best Chinese city. I have to disagree with Marco on this one - Hangzhou was way better. Nonetheless, Suzhou did have it's charms. If you got off the busy thoroughfares, the back alleys were filled with locals strolling around along the network of canals. One of Suzhou's claims to fame is their gardens. Maybe due to the overcast weather or my pre-spring timing, I found them to be under-cared for and over-priced. The museums were a better deal. The 'general' museum has your standard presentation of jade, pottery, scrolls and Taoist statues that are primary pieces in most of the Chinese museums, but the works are displayed quite well in the Suzhou Museum. The unexpected highlight for me was the Silk museum - good explanation about the history of silk development and the Silk Road. Best of all though, was the displays of the 1000+ year old loom design. It is about 15 ft high and 25 ft long and requires 2 people to operate. There was one in use while I was there and I spent nearly 20 minutes trying to figure out how it worked - I think I need to go get another PhD first.
I stayed one night in Suzhou. The hostel was great, except for the drunk chinese girls breaking down the glass door at 3 am - I went back to sleep. Here, I also had the pleasure to meet 2 South Korean guys (both named Huang). Their english was a little limited, but 'hey, so is my Korean'. They are both halfway through college and are getting ready to serve their mandatory 2-year army stint. From what I understand, they must complete the service before they can finish their degrees (??? - maybe something got lost in translation). They are total pacifists and were praying for some sort of job like cook or driver. They had two weeks of free time before their service and hence came for a 12 day blitz of China. We hungout in Suzhou for a bit and then parted ways. I told them about my plans to hash in Shanghai. So after a quick visit to Hangzhou, they met back up with me in Shanghai - I will get to that in the next blog entry.

Cleanliness: The Tourist Factor

Somewhere along the line I lost track of a day. I intented to arrive in Hangzhou Sunday morning to catch the Hangzhou hashers for a run, but it turns out it was Monday. I was a little bummed about that, but the good news is that I now know what day it is. If I had known that all the celebrations in Nanchang last weekend were for March 15th, China's national "Quality Day" holiday, I would of not made such an egregious error. Chong informed me that Quality Day was created a decade or so ago as a reminder that China needed to improve the quality of the goods they produced. There is also apparently a degree of intervention by the police to help "promote" better quality. Chong says he has seen a noticeable difference.
So here's the rundown: I stepped off an overnight train early Monday morning in Hangzhou, grabbed a room at a hostel and then a cup of coffee - I finally found cheap, good coffee! I quickly realized Hangzhou is incredibly clean; and relative to the rest of the Chinese cities I have visited so far, it is immaculate. This city of 6 million mostly encircles West Lake, a beautiful and serene lake about 1.5 miles across and completely surrounded by gardens and manicured walkways. In terms of walking and upkeep, this place definitely out-does any Chinese city I have visited so far. Which is consistent with the fact that it is flooded with tourists. But this time, the tourist base has much more international representation. From Guangzhou to Nanchang I was amazed at how few westerners I had seen. Most of those I had seen were business types staying close to the hotels, exchange students and less than 4 backpackers - a stark contrast to my past backpacking trips. Not so in Hangzhou - where previously my whiteness was turning heads lefts and right, here I'm just another white guy. The little bit of anonymity has been nice, but the downside is that now most places cater to westerners - hence why I found 'cheap, good coffee' - and getting off the beaten path has become a little challenging.

I spent two days in Hangzhou. Did lots of walking and picture taking - I seriously could not take enough pictures. I rented a bike and biked up into the surrounding hills with loads of tea plantations and then coasted down - very, very quickly (enhanced by the, umm, poor-functioning brakes). I also found a bookstore - with books in english - replinishing my reading material. And finally, I was able to meet up with Chong at Zhejiang University. He is working on his research project now in his senior year. He looks like he might follow the path of an organic chemist - his hood is a disaster. He gave me a tour of Hangzhou and explained alot of things about China that had previously escaped me (such as Quality day, the train lettering system, etc.) due to my inability to understand a single word other than those for 'hello', 'thank you' and 'beer'. He is very excited about heading off to grad school in America next year - watch out everybody.

Right now I'm in Suzhou and setting my sights for Shanghai this weekend.

Sick with Irony

With the cold dissipating and the laundry dropped off, I finally saw the sun after 5 or 6 days and decided to day-trip it out of Nanchang to the nearby bucolic villages of Luotiancun, Jingtai and Shuinan. They are connected by stone-flagged pathways and seem to be amenable to tourists coming in and peekng their heads in where ever the hell they please. Strangely, there is no 'admission' to the villages and the locals are not out selling their wears. I am not sure what the locals have to gain - maybe it's government subsidized - who knows. The general attraction is the peaceful rural setting of these nearly 1400 year old villages. Hand pumps dot the villages and with locals calming smiling. A few sites are the claimed 1000 year old, still operational, well, the old (restored) waterwheel and 700 year old camphor tree. Personally, I just enjoyed the slow country life and trapsing through the yellow rapeseed fields. Which by the way, I finally figured out is what I have been eating with many of my meals - steamed and rolled in minced cayenne-like peppers (of course everything I order in China is covered in peppers.) It all made for a nice day and several days of dreary weather.

Ok, now the ironic part. So, I'm munching on a bag of 'Lays' potato chips in Shibi waiting for a bus. Twenty-five minutes later I catch the transfer to Nanchang in Anyi. Ten minutes down the road from Anyi, out of nowhere comes this wave of sickness: cold sweats, nausea, etc. WARNING: If you are made easily queezy, skip this paragraph. After several valient efforts to not puke, I lose the battle and desperately fling open the window and let it fly - four times. Being that I am in the very front seat of a bus traveling at 40 mph, I do a hell of a job covering atleast 40-45% of the side of the bus. Naively thinking I had control at this point, 10 minutes out of Nanchang, I hurl three more times. But this time it's those gut wrenching hurls and the wind didn't do me any favors on the last hurl. Once in Nanchang, I get the bus driver to let me off early so I could catch a taxi to my hotel ASAP, and also so I don't have to deal with everyone looking at me and my artistic expression down the side of the bus when we pull into the bus station. I make it to room just in time to deal with the oncoming wave of violent diarrhea. I rest, then deal with wave two, and am now shaking uncontrollably, can't warm up and feel severally dehydrated. Long story short, 6 bottles of water, several ibuprofen and 7 hours later I stuff my face with noodles, fruit and oreos. Thirty minutes later I literally feel 100% fine. I have never had so much violent sickness come and go so quickly. The cause you ask?

I haven't verified this yet, but as I was eating those chips I thought "gee, these sure remind me of those Olean chips I had once about 10 years ago. You know, the ones that gave me bad diarrhea." I remember that on that package it said something along the lines of 70% of consumers suffered from either diarrhea, nausea, etc. I think Olean is a brand name for olestra and is a fairly non-digestable fat and hence more 'healthy'. I am sure it is still around in our food, but I haven't seen potato chip bags advertising it in years. So my hunch is, they made a crap load of this stuff, couldn't sell it to the American market and thus offloaded it on the poor chinese. Ironically, I travel half-way around the world and on a daily basis eat unidentifiable fried animal organs from street vendors and it's the American non-natural export that does me in. Go figure. (BTW: for you language nazis out there, if that is not an actual example of irony, then pipe-down. I never truly understood what was, and what was not, 'irony' in that Alanis Morissette song anyway.)

Feeling ready to go, today was another nice day and I spent the day cruising around Nanchang. Apparently, this city is quite notable for it's role in the communist uprising. But outside the bronze reliefs dedicated to Stalinist efforts and early socialist movements, all I saw was a capitalism feeding frenzy. I walked for hours in some of the busiest streets I have ever stepped foot on with people racing from store to store to store. Similar to Yichang and Guangzhou which I extolled for their lively riverside promenade activities and lush parks, there are several parks and small lakes in the middle of the city that are filled with people mulling about in these little oasises. There was just a slew of activity. I have to give it to the Chinese, no matter where I go, what day it is or what time it is, there is always people doing something whether it be work or pleasure outings. But the neat part is that, every busy city has it's own little flavor separating it apart form the others and I never get bored walking around all day. Tonight I'm taking an overnight sleeper to Hangzhou in Zhejiang province to see if I can meet up with Chong Wang, a student from Zhejiang University who worked with me last summer in the lab trying to bust down the door on some new iron chemistry. Oh, by the way Chong, I will see you tomorrow. I hope you are free.

From Hydroelectrics to Taichi (3/9/09 - 3/12/09)

The last 4 days in Hubei Province: Jishou - Yichang - Three Gorges Dam - Yichang - Xiangfan - Wudang Shan - Nanyan - Wudang Shan - Xiangfan - Nanchang. I have been moving a lot and, in combination with the horrendous weather up in Wudang Shan, managed to pick up a cold. Blah. But after some beef noodle soup, cold meds and several oranges I am rebounding as I sit here in this internet cafe at four in the morning in some back alley of Nanchang. So here's the breakdown of the last few days:

In Yichang, I sucked it up and payed for a tour-guided group for the Three Gorges Dam. Although the tour is all in chinese, it was a good deal because it takes care of all the transportation, admission fees to the dam and gets you through all the security hoops which is actually pretty tight. I lucked out though. In my group was one english speaking guy, Sham from Seattle, a hydroelectric engineer of 27 years. Unfortunately, he had to catch a plane after the tour and we couldn't grab lunch, but he was able to give me insight into the workings of the dam: a gravity dam, 2km long, max headwater of 113 m, 26 generators, crane operated gates, etc, etc. Sham had the perfect setup: semi-retired, works 3 days a week, full bennies and travels 2 months a year. Anyway, it was a bit foggy that day and my pictures don't really do the dam justice - watch the History Channel special on it. As for Yichang, it is actually one the nicest cities I have visited. It was surprisingly clean and people actually put their trash in the grabage cans! It had a very lively night scene along the river promenade (even for a monday) with people dancing on the promenade to everything from ball-room music to some sort of Chinese-macarena-electric slide type thing.

After that, I set my sights for Wudang Shan, a UNESCO designated World Heritage site - a mountainous region of about 400 km littered with Taoist temples and structures dedicated to taichi studies. By the time I got up to the small town of Nanyan, which serves as a starting point for several important trails, everything was totally envoloped in clouds with visibility no greater than 100 ft at best. I then set off for the trail leading to the highest point in the region up to the Golden Hall on Tianzhu peak. Initially, I thought that the person who wrote the section in the guide book about how strenous the trail is was likely a wimp. Needless to say, I was pretty beat after 2.5 hours of solid stair climbing. However, I have to say it was pretty tranquil and eerie at the same time with every new set of stairs continuing to a vanishing point in the fog. Along the way there were several temples, shrines and 'heavens' gates' devoted to Taoist deities and founders most dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries. The top third portion of steps was also all original adding to the mystique of the place. I can only 'imagine' that the scenery was fantastic - I will have to buy some postcards...

The next day the cloud level lifted a little and I was able to see some of the scenary a bit and I did a few small hikes. But the weather was pretty miserable and things were starting to freeze over so I pulled the plug and headed back to Xiangfan. On the way down from the mountains though I had the chance to meet 4 westerners who were living at one of the taichi schools for periods as short as 6 weeks to as long as 18 months! Their day goes as such: stretch for an hour, training for ~ 6 hours, stretch, relax and sleep. One fee pays for everything including room and food (rice). They get 1.5 days off a week. I caught them on their day off going to town to 'refuel'. They all talked glowingly of the school and enjoyed the discipline. So, if you have some free time and want to work on your taichi ... just a thought. Anyway, one of the guys, Tobi, is finishing up at the school and heading to Shanghai next week. As Shanghi is also in my sights, I am going to try to meet up with him. He was telling me about these 'metro runs' that they do - sounds kind of like hashing but on metro lines... We'll see.

Side note on trains: Up until this point, I have been toughing out the long rides (8+ hrs) on "hard seats". The last being from Yichang to Xiangfan in which there were no free seats (over-booked) so I stood for a solid 9 hrs in the interchange section of the train - the section where a lot of people like to smoke and is often very packed with people and goods. Oh, and it's also the place where parents come bring their small toddlers to pee. Well after that, it was all sleeper coaches for me - I don't care how much it costs. I arrived here in Nanchang via sleeper coach and it was worth every cent. And the best part: they come tell me when I am at my destination! In the regular seats I can never figure it out, and rather, I try to make educated guesses about where I am at by looking out the window at the surroundings. Asking people isn't that easy. As I have mentioned before, "international" sign language does not always seem to compute very well.

I will probably stay here in Nanchang a few days (I need to do some laundry!) and then slowly work my way to Shanghai.

Fatback in the Karsts (3/6/09 - 3/8/09)

Not eager to jump on long train rides, I went for a short bus-taxi-bus medley to Dehang, a couple hours north of Fenghuang. It's a small, small Miao village tucked in between towering columns of rock and dense vegetation. As an entry point to Jiulongxi Jingqu and Yuquanxi Scenic Areas it is marauded by Chinese tourists by day, but by evening when I arrived, it was all mine!

After staking out a great little room on the river (not many choices) I grabbed some food only to be quickly pulled into a party of about 25 people toting around a 10 gallon jug of some sort of sweet wine. They quickly pulled up to my table and wanted to take 'shots' of the wine with me. However, 2 caveats quickly became apparent: the 'shots' were out of bowls and you had to take three of them everytime with the person with whom you were drinking. One of the ladies then sang me a song (couldn't tell you what, but it sounded nice) and then they jumped me and spread ashes on my face as all the other guys had done to themselves. Eventually we all ended up around a bonfire with the jug. I impressed them with my 'jumping through bonfire skills' and they showed me their version of roasting marshmellows - sausage on bamboo - it was fantastic. I retired after another hour or so, stumbling through the unlit village walkways - good times.
I spent the next day and this morning exploring the scenic areas consisting mainly of karst topography filled with upthrusting columns of rock cut by rivers and waterfalls everywhere. I took tons of waterfall pictures, but decided to use some discretion on how many I would post here because the pictures just don't do them justice. Liusha Falls was however the most impressive being the largest in China at 216 m. Breaking away from the crowds I scouted out a narrow, winding trail to the top. With out a soul up there, the views were amazing. Naively, thinking I was at the top, I followed the trail a little more, only to find a small village on top (on top of the cliffs) with terraced gardens as far as I could see. Ridiculous.

I did a few more hikes and could not take enough pictures - I took more pics here than I had in the previous week and a half. The village also had a few other things to offer. Being a tourist spot, like Fenghuang, it was pretty clean and they also offered daily shows with dancing and singing - good stuff. I'm still in the Hunan province and you can tell by the food. The food is excellent but served up with loads of spicy cayenne like peppers. Apparently, the international symbol for 'just a little bit' means 'a fistful'. However, it is totally redeemed by the fact that nearly everything has large chunks of fatback in it - I'm in heaven! I requested an all veggie dish this morning - yup, fatback!

After a morning hike and no less than a dozen requests to have my picture taken with chinese tourists, I headed out for Yichang (near three gorges dam). However, "no train today" so I'm stuck in Jishou for the night. No biggy, for ~$14 I got a queen size bed, my own bathroom, my own 5 gallon water dispensor (weird) and a computer in my room! Tomorrow, Yichang.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Smogless Fenghuang (3/5/09 - 3/6/09)

After 22 hours of two train rides and a bus ride I arrived in freezing cold Fenghuang. Yet, the cold does not seem to deter the chinese from visiting this Miao and Tujia minority based riverside village. Relative to what of China I have seen so far, they make quite an attempt to keep Fenghuang pretty clean - primed for the tourists. I have spent 50% of my attention checking out the quaint river scenes, small shops, street vendor food, towers, pagodas, foot bridges, ancient city walls, etc.; and I have spent the other 50% watching all the Chinese tourists watching the above list of things which makes the touristy side of Fenghuang quite interesting, because to me, it's all foreign.

I posted some pics of his place and it really is quite a neat place to visit. The riverside area is really picturesque with boat rides up and down the river, people washing clothes and at night they light paper lanterns to set afloat down the river. The food here in Hunan province is in stark contrast to what I observed/tasted in the Cantonese region. Many of the restaurants put out the vegetables and animals (pheasants, chicken, turtles, fish, clams, etc.) for you to see before you decide to go in. Not exactly sanitary I guess, but they fry/boil/steam the hell out of everything so I guess I'm not too worried. I have been having problems ordering because there is no pictures on the menu, but last night was aided by a group of chinese tourists (who spoke no english) insisting I sit with them and eat from the 10+ dishes they had already ordered. "Eddy" acted out the animal specific to each dish - duck, cow, clam and pork. After, we grabbed a couple beers at a local hangout blaring chinese karaoke and then took a slew of pictures down by the riverside. I tried to pay for stuff, but they wouldn't have it and just yelled at me in Chinese - so 'yeah!', free dinner and beer! Along the food line, they make this great sweet ginger treat which starts out as a large sticky wad hanging from a hook on the street. They tease out strings of it, dry it, cut it up and bag it. I'm on my fourth bag. There are also shishkabob (sp?) vendors who fry up various veggies/meats - I particularily enjoyed the octupus and mushrooms, but a little too salty at times. And most memorable would be the flattened and dried pig faces - I didn't taste this one though - a picture sufficed.

Fenghuang is a great place to wander around - mostly windy, stone cobbled streets and lots of vendors. The chinese tourists seem to really want to take pictures with me in their pictures. Not sure, if I am the town freak or not, but it's entertaining. However, this can be painful after awhile as whithin every group, every individual has a camera and seems to be very worried about 'digital storage security' and hence each individual takes 2 or 3 pics of the same thing.

Ok, I could blabber on about Fenghuang a little more, but you get the idea. But, getting back into the country side has been rewarding. There is no smog, rooms have dropped from the $15-20 range to the $3-5 range and the pace is a little bit slower.

No Starving in Canton (3/2/09 -3/4/09)

Guangzhou, aka Canton, is the largest city in Guangdong province and they are known for there Cantonese food. Among other things this place has a lot of history as one of the oldest trading hubs of China dating back to 200 BC. It is full of fantastically beautiful parks, my favorite being the Orchid Garden, claiming to have over 10,000 potted orchids of over 200 species - I would believe it. However, my start here was a little rough, as the immediate train station area, where I arrived on monday morning, was anything but 'fantastically beautiful' and was everything chaotic and ugly. There was absolutely no english anywhere and I have yet to see another backpacker. I spent my first hour walking in circles trying to find a certain hostel only to find that it exists no more. After finding a place to sleep, I spent another hour trying to find a place to get money. After that, I was ready to light out town the first thing the next morning.

However, 2 days later, I am still here. Once I got away from the train station area, this city really opened up. The 3+ mile (that is all I walked) Pearl river promenade is full of moving lights on the ferries, both sides of the promenade and on the buildings and includes the largest TV I have ever seen - an entire face of a 20 story building. There are also good museums here with cheap english audio guides. Despite getting lost countless times, the back streets have been a real joy. I basically can walk all day never emerging from the alleyway shops and throngs of people. The Qingping market was a sight to see filled with large clear bags of dried flowers, mushrooms, ginseng, sea horses, lizards, frogs and all sorts of things I couldn't identify. And then there were the 'fresh' things - bins of scorpions, water snakes, eels, cobras, turtles, mallards, and yes, kittens - all for consumption purposes. But my personal favorite was the exotic wine store using the likes of whole cobras, black ants and frogs to make near 39% ABV wine. Did I mention the snake penis wine... you first.

Best of all - the food, coupled with the price of the food! Bakeries abound too. For less than a total of $4.50 I got a tall boy with my beef (probably not beef) noodle soup and hit up the local bakeries - twice. My guide book mentions something about the Cantonese never letting you leave hungry ... After force feeding myself, I still could not finish my orange-chicken-like dish last night. The down side, of course, is I don't speak a lick of the language, I have yet to find anyone who speaks english (except the local kids who say 'hello' to me and then run away giggling) and nothing (helpful) is written in english. Needless to say, I do a lot of pointing and gesturing. I am going to rock at scherades when I get back.

Hong Kong has PBR (3/1/09)

I kicked off my last day in Hong Kong by having to settle with Starbucks coffee because it was the only coffee place open - ahh! I was initially concerned this was an bad sign, fortunately this did not hold true. I explored Hong Kong island central for the afternoon - saw a few sites and got in some great, cheap noodles on the street. With a full belly I went and met the Wanchai hash group. I was told they were more of a social group than a running group. Lies, all lies. With my leeks in hand I showed up to meet the mixed expat and local hash group celebrating the Welsh St. David' s holiday. I got points for bringing the leeks, but by points, I mean they reserved all the PBR for me because nobody liked it - I didn't let in on the secret.

Of course I only received my reward after a grueling 14+ km rambo run with no BBs, no HHs, no falses, just running and well over a 1200 ft elevation climb. My knee gave me problems on the way down the mountain and I lost the leading pack less than a 1/4 mile from the end. At which point I then proceeded to get incedibly lost, by myself, in Hong Kong... for about an hour. I finally found my way back to the group and still wasn't the last one in. Turned out to be a great group - we did on-after at a local Thai hideout and onon-after at an english pub. This a a great group to run with if you are in Hong Kong, but bring your running legs and a compass - there are no sweepers.