The End

Sunday June 20, 2010

So I thought I would close up shop here and try to summarize 2 weeks of immersion in a very different place.

Best thing:

The people, their strong family structure, friendliness and naive trust in people was what I enjoyed the most. Seeing grandparents playing with their grandkids in the parks, grown children holding hands with their aging parents and old folks dancing in the parks at night left me feeling warm and fuzzy. Everyone had a smile and offered “hello” to us out of towners and we felt welcome there. The woman on the train who left her pocketbook and cellphone in the seat next to me while she went to the bistro car to get hot water was my first introduction of how trusting people are of each other, and strangers (which historically has gotten them into trouble). The way the cars, bikes, scooters and pedestrians watch out for "us" and not "me" and the tolerance for each other is be a trait we Americans could use more of. For some reason, the males here are not the macho jerks you see back home. Women seem to be treated more as people than as women by men.

Worst thing:

The air pollution never went away in the whole 2 weeks we got there and I am guessing it is from all the coal they use for generating electricity, cooking and heating. And yet you don't notice it after you are there for a day or 2. I only really noticed the smell on the day we came back from the Great Wall in the mountains.

Economy:

They are growing like crazy and they know it and they are a little worried about where it is going. Cranes were building 40 story apartment buildings, factories and office towers everywhere we traveled, condensing older, less dense housing and sucking people from country life into urban life. The effect is the standard of living is rising in China and people feel like this is their time.

Transportation:

I am a bit embarrassed to say that if the U.S. ever wants to get serious about efficiently moving people and goods around, we should contact the Chinese and have them build a train and bus system for us. They are good at it, it is cheap, and it is used by all of it's people daily. Local people and goods transportation is still pedal bikes and electric bikes and they are cheap, easy to move around in and provide daily exercise for young and old. Cars are appearing because they are a status symbols being marketed to them, not because they make much sense.

History:

As an outsider, I think of the century old history of China, but the Chinese think of their history as starting in 1949 with Mao.

Government:

While the government is central, day to day life seems to be local. There are police here and there, but with very little crime, there does not seem to need to be a big presence of police. People are careful to not talk about the government too much. Everybody there thinks Obama is great, but if asked about Bush, they say nothing. They do not criticize our government or their own. Beijing is the home base for government and you can see the grand government buildings everywhere. If they want to build a railway, it just happens. I suppose if you are in the way, you have to get out of the way. There are no drugs here, drug dealers are executed, period.

What things cost:

If you stay away from any place outsiders may go, then you can get a nice meal for $2.00. Food is cheap and I assume energy is cheap given all the air conditioners we see in every shop and hotel. Gasoline is $4.00 per gallon, more than here. Like many countries, if you live simply, you can live cheaply, but if you want to go to a western chain restaurant, the price is 8 to 10 times higher.

Pet peeve:

The culture is to throw things on the ground. That nice new train has garbage all over the floor at the end of the trip. People throw stuff on the sidewalk. There are lots of city workers picking things up to offset this, but there it is still there.

Sanitation:

While perfectly safe if a little common sense is used, you have to watch it a bit. They cook most everything, they only serve hot water, not cold. Public toilets are very smelly and you have to learn to squat if you are going to use them. Kids pee (and worst I suppose) on the sidewalk which probably saves a lot of diapers. Facilities near places where westerners go are pretty normal.

The influence of the outside world:

It is sort of sad to see all the western marketing being set up in China. Skinny models in skimpy clothes with too much makeup, ads showing model families showing off their new car, cool young people drinking Red Bull. I hope marketers are not successful in convincing the people that their lives suck without all these products, like they have been here. I hope the Chinese hang onto those strong family ties they have. Quality of life does not require makeup.

For me traveling is a chance to prove that Vermont is the most beautiful place to live on earth. It is good to be home.

Moving Day

Saturday, June 19, 2010

So this picture is Jake saying goodbye to the hutong we spent the last 4 or 5 days in, where our hostel was. The nice young woman at the front office found a small bathroom scale we used to distribute the weight among the bags. You are allowed to check 2 50 lb bags (22kg) each so there was plenty of room. The hardest part (as it turns out for Jake) is shuffling the bags through the subway. We finished packing and left a pile of leftover stuff like toilet paper and shampoo, which the same woman said would not go to waste, and headed out for one last walk-about to find some breakfast. We found porridge and steamed rolls, then walked a few circles around the neighborhood to say good bye. Jake found a small shop that sells misc stuff for cheap and bought a few last minute trinkets (thankfully not Ming vases or swords).

We paid the hostel bill with a cash / credit card combo to use up all the RMB money we had left, with a little RMB left for the subway and airport. Brave Sir Jake huffed the heaviest bags out of guilt (a useful parental tool by the way, don't tell the kids) through the subway which was not very busy, thankfully. The subway to the airport is 10 times more expensive, but to be fair, it does go a long way, so we had a scenic last tour of Beijing from the above ground train. We thought we had plenty of time, but by the time you get through all the layers of customs and security, the 2 hour buffer was gone and we had about 20 minutes to find something to eat before my plane left. We returned on 2 separate airlines, me on Continental (94 movies through Newark) and Jake on United (3 movies through Chicago). Somehow I lucked out this trip and got an aisle seat with nobody sitting on the other side of me, and alternated between reading (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (needs to read at least once every year or 2)), watching movies and napping. Four hour layover in Newark, then puddle jumper to Burlington, and Deb and Jake were waiting for me at the gate. So half way round the world in one 36 hour day with 4 or 5 20 minute catnaps, and actually not feeling too bad.

Once again, it is great to hear that the weather was bad the 2 weeks we were gone. We caught Deb up on China on the way home and as always happens to us lucky Vermonters returning home, the appreciation of this beautiful state, in this messy but great country, and this time with markedly wonderful clean pure air, unlike the perpetual polluted Chinese air. Hannah met us at home and I got the little 2 week hug and Jake got the enormous 5 month hug. It is sweet to see your squabbling kids grow up to be best friends. Jake sat on the same stool at the same counter and had the same good old bowl of real cereal with real cows milk he has been sitting at since he could clamber up there, showers for both of us and deliciously crawl into bed. It is good to be home, in all respects.

Summer Palace

Friday June 18, 2010

Today is our last full day here and we decided to go to the Summer Palace, 12km outside Beijing. This is where the Emperor went to cool off in the summer and get away from Beijing, you know a summer camp. I was expecting you know the rustic cabin with iffy plumbing and a roof that needed some work, but this as we all know is not what we found.

The Summer Palace is 10 times times bigger than the Forbidden City, It sits on a huge man made lake. The soil removed from the lake was used to create a mountain overlooking the lake, and of course on the mountain is your usual assortment of palatial buildings and grounds. Who would ever want to go back to the musty hot Forbidden City with nothing but a moat and a 20' wide stream running through it. There are man made islands and bridges connecting the islands. They had farms and weaving shops and pottery shops, and the list goes on.

Of course the “Anglo-French” burned it all down (the wooden bits anyway) after the second Opium War where the Chinese took the foreigners opium, burned it and washed the ashes out to sea because of the damage it was doing to the Chinese people. So the Chinese rebuilt it all and it got burned down again by pretty much the same guys for pretty much the same reasons after the Boxer Revolution. So they rebuilt it all again. I guess they were as advanced at diplomacy back then as we are now..

So after walking the grounds for 6 hours and taking a boat to get across the lake (nice boat with a dragon up front and a pagoda on top), it closed and we had to go. Jake wanted to do some last minute shopping (this is usually where he decides to buy something huge or illegal) but we couldn't find the place he wanted to go (more walking), so one of his teachers called and invited us out to dinner. She took us to a nice place (unlike the places Jake takes me), which I thanked her for. We had a nice long dinner and she practiced English and Jake practiced Chinese, then said our goodbyes and caught the subway before it closed. My dogs are barking and we haven't packed for the plane. Sleep, then pack in the morning.

Lightning on the Great Wall

Thursday June 17, 2010

The pickup for the Great Wall tour came earlier than we expected but we grabbed some rain gear and left with the driver of the tour. We were the first picked up and the last dropped off so it turned out to be a long day. The van was an F350 diesel Ford (sure you all wanted to know that) and the other people were, 1 Australian, 2 German women, 4 Canadians and 5 Chinese people. I was supposed to take 3 hours to get there but it took at least 5. This didn't bother Jake and I but some of the others were getting torqued about the delays. The driver was trying to hook up with another driver who did not know the way there, but eventually he found out. Australian is angry, German woman is angry, Canadians are impatient, etc. It made us realize that we have not been around tourists for 2 weeks, only the calm, tolerant Chinese so this was new (yuk). Anyway, we stopped for a quick lunch, which the German woman bitched about, and started hiking.

I forgot to mention that it was raining really good all the way there. There was some good lightning strikes and thunder as well, so we were thinking they might call it off, but we remembered we were in China. So off we went in the downpour and lightning and thunder. It was actually pretty powerful climbing up the green mountains with all this booming around us. We did not see any signs of greasepots so we assumed we would be ok. We got to the wall in 45 minutes or so and it of course was spectacular. For some reason I thought it would be in rough shape, but for the most part, it is in very good shape. There are sections that are little more than a rubble walkway with the walls gone on either side, but the wall itself is in pretty good shape. The watchtowers in this part of the wall are really close together compared to the other sections of the wall, so it was fun to hike and then take shelter from the rain in a watchtower. Most of the watchtowers have no roofs but a few were pretty dry with roofs, so we took breaks in those. It turned into one of those hikes where you get soaked through and it doesn't matter any more. We hiked west for an hour and a half and then turned around and hiked back. Some of the sections have very, I mean very steep stairs. There was one watchtower with a makeshift bed and sleeping bag which may have belonged to one of the old women that try to sell souvenirs on the wall. These are some tough women up here.

So back to the trail off the wall, soaked to the bone and cold, when Jake spotted a sign that someone was selling coffee, which sounded great, so we stopped and drank coffee and chatted with the couple that ran the trailside concession. They said they do a big business in renting tents and sleeping gear to college kids who hike up and sleep on the wall. For 400RMB (about $60.00) they take the equipment up as well as water, food and beer, and set everything up for you. They then haul up and cook breakfast for you as well. Remember this is a lot of money in China and a cheap trip for a tourist so it is a good business for them.

Anyway, we had tea and beer, then went back on the bus to Beijing. It was like a bus full of wet dogs. Everybody fell asleep from the wet and cold, except the driver who did not hike. Jake set up a last night out with his classmates so he dropped me off, changed into dry clothes and took off. I am content to stay in the hostel and go to sleep.

Forbidden City and Pizza

Wednesday June 16 – Forbidden City

Fell asleep last night with thunder, lightning and rain and this morning it was hot and muggy again so I guess it didn't clear. We found a porridge kind of breakfast (big bowl for $0.15) and some kind of steamed buns. Caught the Metro to the Forbidden City, paid the entrance fee (60 RMB each, about $9.90) and made a day of it. The hawkers are working overtime and they remind me of black flies that just will not go away. Every trick in the book to sell you a tour, flags, water, books, post cards, you name it. Jake calmed me down and got me through the gauntlet and into the City.

The Forbidden City is kept up pretty well but has it's share of blistered paint and dusty exhibits. Still it is enormous and beautiful and important to the people of China. China's history boils down to this as far as I can figure it out (Excuse me ahead of time if I am way off base). For thousands of years they lived isolated from the world and had what they needed to get by peacefully, minus a dynasty turn over from time to time. Then starting in the 17 or 18^th century the outside world started picking at it, trying to take advantage of it economically. After a couple attempts at repulsing the west, it sort of lost, the emperor thing ended in 1911 and the west set up shop and took control. China tried on this new modern suit for awhile but kept getting taken for fools and after WWII, Mao started the revolution and took control, I think with his heart in the right place, but unfortunately he thought China could make the Soviet model of central control work. That didn't work out exactly as planned so after Mao dies, China still was using central control but started pushing the free market system on a local scale, and keeping the big decisions for the central government. So what I see on the street in China this week is little guys making and selling stuff to each other, and business people setting up business and getting relatively wealthy. So it's like they dropped this western style Porsche engine economic model into a rickshaw, and it is going like hell. They build 50 stories apartment buildings next to 50 story offices and huge factories, and laborers pour in from the countryside and work for cheap. I did see an English language newspaper say that labor prices are rising 15-25% after strikes at factories, so I think the price of Chinese goods is going to rise.

I may be way off base, but that's my uneducated take on what I am seeing.

So Forbidden City has an endless number of ornate buildings that have different museum-like displays. Not sure how we did it, but we blew almost the whole day there.

So Jake thinks he sort of remembers approximately where there might be a good pizza place and the evening's adventure begins. We take a subway to about where he thinks it is, and after asking directions and running out of breadcrumbs several times, we find a hip, happening neighborhood on a lake called Houhai. This lake is full of foreigners and bars. Lots of neon, lots of good western bar music acts, karaoke in half of them, and not so cheap prices. Actually exactly what you would pay back home, but really expensive compared to $2.00 meals (including a 600ml beer) normal folks eat. So after a loooooong hike, we are standing on a small bridge and Jake is searching for signs of said pizza place and he points at a little dingy unlit sign that says “Hutong Pizza” on a brick wall. Mind you, this is not the place but only an indication you are somewhere close. So away from the neon strip, down some back alleys and another little sign appears over a door, and we are there. How anyone even knows this place exists is beyond me, but it must be one of the hidden secret spots. A couple French girls were ordering calzones (and smoking thank you very much), and a trickle of Europeans and maybe an American or 2 come and go. We order a good old American veggie pizza (with green olives, oh well) and a couple of beers. Like the hamburger, I think my system needed a rice and noodle purge, and this did the trick.

We had a harder time getting out, and finally a police guy sent to the bus stop, and Jake figured it out from there. So back for a quick shower to get the salt off after a hot day of endless walking.

Tomorrow we do the Great Wall...

Back in Bejing

Tuesday June 15, 2010

Train arrived in Beijing at the older station around 7am. Had to wake Jake up when the ticket lady came through. When you get on they swap your purchased ticket for a plastic card and then swap back at the destination, not sure why. Said goodbye to our new friend from last night, and hit the street to find the hostel. We left it with Bobby that we would just show up and he said he could find us a room for the rest of our stay in Beijing. We still have a lot to see in the capital and we actually like Beijing a lot after seeing Shanghai and Xian. I think the fact it is the capitol means all the big, impressive state stuff is here. We still have not gone into the Forbidden City (it is forbidden after all), and haven't done the wall or summer palace.

We were starving since we didn't eat since lunch yesterday afternoon, so we stopped and I got an Egg McMao (Jianbing) and Jake got some kind of sweet roll shaped like a baseball with red bean paste in it. Topped it off with warm soy milk and off to the hostel. All our bags were still stacked behind the desk just where we left them and they said they had a cheaper room in the other hostel. The “girls” that work there helped us move all the stuff (remember, Jakes college stuff), through the Hutong back streets to the new place which again was not fancy but very homey and clean, with air conditioning and Wi-Fi. So long overdue showers and a few hours sleep to catch up, very nice...

There is a subway stop a few blocks down the street so this is even easier to get to and from than the other one. We went to the Qianmen Gate which is one of the big original gates to the inner city and tripped on a fantastic large park with ponds, fish (and people fishing), large lawns and ornate old (really) old buildings with comfy benches everywhere in the shade. It is pretty hot and very muggy but here there was a soft breeze so it was very pleasant just sitting with Jake discussing the usual stuff.

We bought a couple ice pops in front of Forbidden City (still have not gone in) and then off to find some dinner after things started closing up, We went across town to a place Jake knew that sold dark German beer and good food, and while not air-conditioned, had the fans running. We ate dinner and then lounged with a couple more beers and watched New Zealand play Slovakia (Chinese narration of course) with the other patrons. We then headed back to the hostel as the lightning started picking up and threatened to dump rain on us. Actually as I am writing this, the lightning and thunder are going pretty good outside. Not sure about tomorrow, maybe Summer palace and Forbidden City (inside finally).

Last Day in Xian

Monday June 14, 2010

Woke up so tight-wad Jake could get the free continental breakfast. The hotel only provides one free breakfast and you pay for the second. This hotel if very nice but empty so I assume word of the cheapskates is out. Briefly spoke with a curly headed redheaded woman from the UK and her 2 grade-school aged curly headed redheaded daughters, who we actually ran into later in the day. She spoke Chinese and was showing her daughters China. And we thought we stood out in a crowd.

We used this hotel to do all of our laundry, so the room looks like a backyard on laundry day with clothes hanging everywhere. Getting laundry done through the hotel is very expensive, like 10RMB for a pair of socks (7RMB per dollar), so we washed the laundry ourselves. It was so humid in Shanghai, nothing would dry and here might not have been much better except for the air conditioning. So we checked out with clean laundry and with no plans except getting on the train in the afternoon.

We spent a couple hours walking on the wall around the city. They charge you, of course, and it was brutally hot up there. There are pagoda looking towers that you can go under to get out of the sun and there was a small breeze so we did a lot of stops to cool off and check out the city. We met a Japanese woman traveling by herself who had been studying English in Australia. I of course pointed out that they do not speak English in Australia per se. We headed down off the wall for lunch, and of course you can't go back up on the wall without paying again so we decided to walk around Xian. We found a great lunch at a Muslim restaurant (no beer) and then found a park where we found Chinese opera music being performed and crowds of old people sampling the music from all the different bands playing. Jake determined that they do this every day throughout the summer. These old-folks have packed schedules between morning exercises in the park, Chinese opera during the day and block dance parties at night. Maybe it is the generation, but when we show up at these, the entire crowd seems to look at us instead of the performers. They offer us seats, bring us tea, and the singers come over and chat us up when they finish singing. Not sure why this crowd was so interested in us? Very strange but very nice.

Then we decided to take a bus (Xian has no subway) so we somehow ended up the only 2 passengers on a small city bus with a painfully shy female bus assistant and a crazy driver who kept complementing Jake on his Chinese.

We went to the train station early thinking we would get a spot to sit, but it was already packed. We once more got frustrated with all the cutting in line and jockeying. We had the bottom 2 bunks of a hard sleeper which was actually easier than the soft sleeper and frankly just as soft. Each room (which is not a closed room), has 6 beds, 3 high and 2 on each side. The top bunk is way up there. A really nice guy spent the night talking with Jake comparing notes on China and the US. He worked at a light fixture company and moved into Xian from the country up north. He was going home to see family in Liaoning, which borders on North Korea, and then plans to move down south to a new job. He was 27 and very talkative.

The train lights go out at 10, so we all called it a night. Everybody was sweaty and hot after a long hot day in the sun. While this was the hottest, clearest day since I have arrived in China, the sky is still hazy. Jake says the closest to a clear sky is after it rains. We are assuming it is all the coal in the electric plants and the coal being burned by all the businesses and street vendors for cooking.

Terra Cotta Warriors and the Ever-Surprising Mr. Lee

Sunday June 13, 2010

So we checked in at 7am to our hotel in Xian (thanks again Deb), and asked about a package tour since our brains are mush and couldn't muster enough neurons to plan something, so they set up the standard tour #1 for us.

We took showers and cleaned up and got a call on Jake's cell that they would pick us up at 8:30 to see Terra Cotta, a factory tour, Qin Shihuang's (first emperor) tomb, Banpo village (6000 year old archaeological dig site) and lunch. We expected a bus tour so we could catch some z's but the tour guide guy and his crazy driver (“call me Mr. Lee”) picked us up in a well worn Chinese version of a Honda Accord and whisked us off to Banpo village. I must say, the car ride was worth the price of admission and I will now use different logic when crossing a street thanks to Mr Lee. Ok, so say you are at a 4 way intersection with 4 lanes meeting. You want to make a left turn. I always thought it was simple to put my blinker on, wait for the light to turn green, make a gentle turn left in the logical lane and proceed on my way. Never occurred to me how much more efficient it is to ignore the red light, turn left into the oncoming traffic and then slowly move over into the right hand lanes that go the correct direction. Traffic here actually is very efficient. The lights are sort of recommendations, the police do not care (we definitely cut off several police cars today), and the more steel you have under you, the more right of way you have. Mr. Lee is an artist. Not only does he do this, he can dial a cell phone, talk at high speed to passengers, and twist his neck to look at pretty girls. Oh and all the cars here have engine trouble lights, and they are all on. Another valuable lesson is never get into a car with a weak horn. In China, the horn is not covered under the warranty, much like brakes and tires in the US. They are considered a consumable since they get so much use. I would argue that based on Mr. Lee, the horn should go on when the ignition is turned on and only not blaring if the driver pushes the horn button.

Banpo is a site a farmer found and, on digging it up, discovered all kinds of signs of life. It is a typical but important site and has been carefully preserved by the government. They dug holes in the ground for storage, their houses were half underground/ half above, they used wood for vertical walls and thatch for roofs, and cooked in outside fire pits. They also made pottery.

Next stop was the factory where they make Terra Cotta Warriors for tourists and a lot of other very high end furniture, jade, carpets, etc. They ship 40% overseas to really rich people, as the stuff is large heavy and very high quality. Jake and I do so love to shop...

Finally the terra cotta warriors pits, where we spend a few hours. This is amazing. So Qin Shihuang was a brutal guy who by the age of 39 had unified China and is considered the first emperor (died 210 BC). He was a bit of a whack job in that he wanted protection in the after life so had thousands of clay warriors made, each different (jobs program), life sized of course and with original weapons. Then he buried them underground and down the street from where he was buried in case he needed them in a hurry. Bad call on the wooden beams with dirt over them so after the wood beams fell in, they were buried alive so to speak. A farmer in the 1970's dug a well and found some clay fragments so they dug it up and found all these warriors. This is like a lot of other stuff in China that confuses me. Didn't anybody know they were there? I guess 1800 years is a long time.

We then climbed to the hill that was his tomb which is filled with mercury and has never been dug up. It is driving Jake nuts that they wouldn't excavate it, but they are pretty tied up right now repairing all those warriors, and it was pointed out that the longer they wait, the better the technology will be. Once the oxygen gets to it, the clock is running in these matters. So complementary lunch and then back in Mr. Lee's battle station to fight our way home. I napped a bit and then we went looking for some giant noodle that Xian is famous for, which we never found. We got really lost and got into a pretty dark side of town, but the amazing thing is, you feel pretty safe anywhere you are. Finally found the Bell Tower, which is the big icon in the center of town, then back to the hotel. In Xian, if you can remember how to get to your hotel from the Bell Tower, anyone anywhere can tell you how to get to the Bell Tower. Tomorrow we stay in town, check out the museum and walk the wall.

Soft Sleeper Train, Hard Night

Saturday June 12. 2010

We got up early in case something went wrong (which it has before) and to make sure we catch the train from Shanghai to Xian. We were on the street by 6:00 and all the street food guys were opening up already, probably for the construction guys. The night before we got fruit at one of the local stands, where I had to get my picture taken with one of the kids working there. Very common and as always, the teens are very nice. We both got a jianbing which is Jake's favorite breakfast food. It is a 12” tortilla (made on the spot) with an egg, some secret sauce, and some kind of crunchy wafer thing folded into the middle of the whole thing. They are about $0.45 and very good. Ate them on the way to the subway. Got to the train station with plenty of time which means you get a place to sit down in the waiting room. We have soft sleepers, but not in the same room. Each room has 2 top and 2 bottom beds but no seats other than the bottom bunks. The top ones are cheaper but if you share a room, the bottom beds become the sitting room, so the top actually gives you a bit more privacy. My roommates were a family of 4, which the conductor women gave them a hard time about (only buying 3 beds). The father worked for Bosch in the auto industry and the 2 kids were about 8 and 6 and both spoke beautiful English. The boys were born in the US in Detroit, as the dad worked there for 5 years. The boys go to an American school so English is very comfy for them. If you know English, you go places in China. They were going all the way to the last stop on the line and Jake and I were only going to Xian. Jake's room also had a family so we were both in the same situation.
We actually slept after the train left and then got up and had lunch in the dining car. The waiters have police uniforms on so not sure what that is all about. Jake's Chinese is pretty good (he will tell you different) and everyone complements him on it.
We spent a long time just watching the countryside go by, trying to figure out what everything was. The dad in my room answered a lot of questions for us . They grow a lot of wheat (for all those noodles) and they plant them on every square inch of land they can find. I saw then harvesting by hand in some spots and as we got further north, the fields got bigger and I started seeing combines at work. There are some rice paddies and some corn being grown as well. We saw a giant noodle factory in the middle of all this wheat area.
There seem to be 3 kinds of buildings in the country / small cities. The oldest look like something put up in the 60's which are concrete and getting very run down with cracked concrete stained by the rusty wundo hardware. Usually one or two floors. The next type are 5 to 20 story apartment buildings maybe put up in the 80's which are a bit run down but functional, pretty modular. The latest buildings are 30-40 story tower apartments put side by side and all identical. They are usually building several of these at once creating what look like whole new vertical cities. I guess it makes sense to pack more people into less space. They may be using coal ash for bricks because I am seeing a lot of grey buildings and there are coal plants everywhere.
Speaking of coal, I forgot to mention that in Shanghai at night, we saw coal barges running with no lights on, sitting low in the water, going one after the other downstream while the bright lit up boats got up and down the banks which hides the barges. During the day there are empty coal barges going upstream sitting way up out of the water. Coal is used for most of their electricity I am guessing. The countryside has electric lines going every which way. Everybody has air conditioning and electric appliances. The street vendors and restaurants use electric, propane and coal for cooking. Compact fluorescent bulbs are most every where. They are charging a lot for electric scooters.
So we turned in around 9pm and I slept until about midnight when we must have gone into Trak-So-Ruff and Shreep-Rike-Poo provinces. I didn't get back to sleep and finally got up at 4am to packup. Our train got into Xian at 5am. Xian has a lot of young Chinese tourists (backpackers), but again no Anglos. We got coffee an McDonalds (about the only place that sells coffee) and figured out how to get to the hotel. Another picture with Jake and a young Chinese student, then a 5km walk to the hotel. They do not mind us checking in at 7am so we showered and lined up a tour bus to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. Oh yeah, bought some amazing fresh made street donuts (still hot) for $0.05 each and had them for breakfast. Off to today's adventure...

Shanghai

Friday June 11

So Jake insisted on getting up early for the free continental breakfast which I was not too crazy about getting up for since my dogs were barking last night and I wanted to catch up on sleep. I ended up going down to check it out, and am I glad I did. Believe it or not, I was able to eat one meal without a single stinking noodle or pork in it. I had good old scrambled eggs, whole wheat toast with orange marmalade and coffee with whole milk and sugar. It was wonderful!! After breakfast we both went back to bed, slept another hour or two, and headed to the Shanghai Museum.

Chinese history is very deep. The main thing I came away with is that China had been technologically advanced since before Christ. Given what they knew then, they should have had microprocessors by about 1200 AD.

If nerds getting excited about nerdy stuff puts you to sleep, you might want to skip the next paragraph, or risk keyboard marks on your forehead tomorrow morning.

These guys were doing bronze casting around 2000 BC, but they did not write then. And not little globs of molten metals, but very sophisticated stuff with dragons and masks on it. They figured out lost wax investment casting by 700 or 800 BC (no Christ yet). And by then they had an alphabet and had inscriptions in their castings. They were doing bi-metallic complex castings around the time Christ came along. They had a piece there showing a mirror they made around 200AD that when sunlight was reflected off it, projected an image onto a screen. I think we think everything was invented in the last 2 centuries, but China was standing on a lot of shoulders pretty early on. I can't figure out why it did not continue after that. Gotta study more Chinese history.

The stone sculptures were the same thing, amazingly advanced before Christ.

So after a nice chat with a student who could speak a bit of English, we headed for Pudong which is on the other side of the river from where we were last night. Pudong is the ultra-modern part of the city and it is impressive. Glass and aluminum buildings and walkways gives it a Jetsons (ask your mom or dad) feel, except there is grass and flower gardens under the buildings (come to think of it, they never mentioned what held those buildings up in the Jetsons...)

We grabbed some bakery goodies and drinks and had a lunch in the park. We keep waiting to see more Anglos with the Expo going on but they are like hen's teeth (ask your gramp or granny).

We took the ferry back over to the Bund on the old side of town (for $0.30 each) and found another hole in the wall restaurant for dinner with 5 ft 10 in ceilings (I know cause I am 5 ft 10 in). Duck and some egg/pork thing on rice (with those nice 600ml beers).

Almost ended up back in the hawkers zone nightmare but managed to find a subway to get us home. Pack up tonight and on the train in the morning. Goodbye Shanghai, I think we got a good feel for your nice city (but not as nice as Beijing).

Train to Shanghai

Thursday June 10, 2010

The train is gorgeous. They should make congress ride Amtrak for a week straight and then ride any of these trains to compare. These babies have different class seats. Supersoft sleepers, soft sleepers, hard sleepers, soft seats and cattle and chicken class (yes that would be us). The sleepers are bunks so you can sleep, and the soft seats look like giant chairs you see in hotel lobbies. Then there is us. Actually our seats were fine. They are pretty cool actually. There are 3 seats on one side of the aisle and 2 on the other. They do not recline but are very comfy. The cool part is you can swivel the 2 or 3 seat sets so they point backwards or forwards, or sideways so you can watch the scenery (remember over NIGHT train). Cool design. The toilet was not as bad as Jacob made it out, it is fine. What stinks is you come onto this gleaming clean bright rain and 10 hours later it is a pig sty. The Swiss would be taking shifts all night with Q-Tips cleaning the bathroom, but these guys are not quite there.

I sat with a young lady who just graduated from college with a degree in Logistical Engineering, and she spoke pretty passable English. I think she was thrilled to practice her English. We gotta get some TV shows that don't make us look like crime scene, gun toting hookers. Or get Canada to produce something trashier than us. They go to Canada instead of here because I think we scare the hell out of them. Anyway, her dad is an electrical engineer at BASF and she has a job starting this summer with MG (the car guys).

So watched a great movie in Chinese (thankfully with Chinese sub-titles or I would have had no idea what was going on) and tried to sleep not very successfully. At dawn we crossed the Yangtze River, very wide and very busy with barges (like coal barges), and from there to Shanghai a couple hours later. It was bumper to bumper construction cranes building new apartment buildings(tall ones), factories and office buildings (even taller). Since the free wi-fi back in Beijing required joining the People's Republic before you get your free 30 minutes [Jacob's note: This is McDonald's policy, as this wi-fi spot was located at a McDonalds. You have to have a PRC ID number in order to successfully register for their "We-Claim-We-Have-Free-Wi-Fi-But-In-Reality-Only-Give-You-30-Minutes-A-Day" service], we did not have great directions to the hotel Deb had set up for us (Thanks Deb, it is great). So the English speaking girl Googled it, got the address, figured out which subway stops to use, which streets and how far, and personally walked us to the correct subway. I never got her name but we thank you very much. Man these people are nice.

So the Expo is in town and we didn't really see many Anglos, and people still stare at us, which is actually kind of cute. I was dehydrated and we were both famished so we did a few drive-by food purchases before going to the hotel. Her directions were perfect.

So first impressions of Shanghai are sort of what I had heard a couple of times. Without the governments grand buildings, parks and public spaces, it is like any other big city: Busy and noisy.

We checked into the hotel pretty early and slept for a couple hours since the train sleep was not holding up, then went off to figure out the subway and get some lunch. Jake loves street food so he got me something yummy with rice and pork in a banana peel. Then we found some rice bowl porridge thingies that hit the spot. I have been hydrating like crazy because it is hot and humid here.

We went back to the hotel again, did some laundry a la sink so they may have chance of being dry by the time we leave.

Then off to battle the subway that compared to Beijing looks like a pile of snakes, very confusing. We went to Expo and tried to take some pictures, but the camera was having none of it. The camera flaked in and out all day so we go with the backup tomorrow. We then went to the Bund and the glitzy shopping district. The Bund is nice if you stay away from the shopping end. It is a wide concrete walkway that goes all along the river and when you hit it at dusk like we did, it is beautiful to see the city lights across the river. They have passenger boats plying up and down both banks of the river lit up like casinos, and if you look real close you can see the non-stop line of coal barges traveling down river in the center of the river. Guess where all the electricity comes from...

The shopping district felt like we walked into a wasps nest of hawkers trying to sell you something. We couldn't get rid of them. So we ducked down some back alleys and found a hole in the wall food place, had dinner way in the back with the friendly locals and a couple beers.

We saw our first accident today. A guy sitting on the sidewalk with a gash out of his leg and a scooter with the front fender hanging off. Some discussion, not heated at all, no police, and the scooter guy cobbles up the fender and drives off. That would be some combination of police and ambulance back home.

We are finding the subway people pretty rude compared to Beijing. Cutting in line is very common. Nobody gives anyone their seats, and every stop is a mad dash of people getting on and people getting off and scrambling for seats. Maybe not so much a China thing as a big city thing.

The scooters in Shanghai are the same as Beijing but there a lot more of them. They work the scooters hard here. We saw a guy on a scooter with 10 water bottles, you know the water cooler things, 5 gallons or so each. These guys are masters of piling huge amounts of stuff on their vehicles.

We walked all over trying to find the subway and didn't get back to the hotel until 11pm so we are beat (again). Jake is worried about missing the continental breakfast (hopefully not noodles again) so we gotta get to sleep. Maybe back to Expo for pictures with the other working camera tomorrow, will decide in the morning.

A Real Burger

Wednesday June 9
Out late so Jake slept late (the bum). We packed everything up except 3 bags of Jake's school stuff which the hostel guy was very happy to keep for us when we were gone. He also kept our 2 backpacks so we can tour the city today in light mode and then come back and get them before going to the train station. Our first job was to get the tickets for the last leg of our trip. Amazingly easy subway ride to the Beijing South station, which is completely different from the other station we went to (Beijing West station). Very modern and clean, and the people there were all business folks and city folks. A few country people but a gleaming modern station. Jake did his Chinese thing and 2 tickets emerged from Xian to Beijing. We then (at my request, maybe demand) went to Micky Ds for a cup of real COFFEE and a real hamburger. I had been going over how this hamburger is going to taste, watching it on the grill in slow motions, bubbling in grease (natural juices). Sad I know, but I need a break from noodles and pork. Jake would disagree.
Still in a junk food daze, we then went to Tienanmen Square and visited the Forbidden City. We walked around the square in the shade (pretty hot and sunny), bought ice-pop thingies (1 RMB = $0.15 ea) and enjoyed the immense outdoor square. The statues are stirring pictures of proud people working together. Lots of pomp and marching of crisply dressed guards. The taller you are, the better jobs you get in the guard sphere of influence. Grandmothers see us and prompt their babies to say “Hello” and the babies then smile and hide when we answer. These kids are really cute and their grandparents and parents dote on then endlessly. It seems that everybody likes to say “Hello” when they see Anglos and get a big kick of us returning the hello, which I enjoy doing, just to see them smile. Gotta keep up that friendly American image, genuine in this case.
We then toured around the NCPA (National Center for the Performing Arts) which is a huge dome of aluminum and glass surrounded by a circular moat of water. This means you go under the moat and look up through the water at the sky when you enter (for RMB40 which we are too cheap to pay and have no time for).
We did a lot of sitting in the shade, people watching, catching up on everything, then back in the subway where Jake showed his tough guy side when one of our cards stopped working with about $3.00 on it. Jake lost and we had to buy another card. Caught lunch in town of blueberry porridge for dad (no noodles or grease in it), lentil porridge for Jake, cold coke and beer. Hot water is a national right here and it is served like cold water at home, free and automatically. The train station has the men's room, the women's room, and the hot water room. They serve hot water on the train.
We went back to the hostel, picked up our packs and headed for the train station. Jake got some tea for the train so we are ready to go. Another great day in Beijing.
And now on to tonight's train adventure...

Train Tickets and Scorpions

Tuesday Jun 8

This morning I let Jake sleep late. I talked to the guy that runs this hostel to see if we could leave some stuff while we went on the train. The plan is to pack what we can carry in a couple backpacks and leave all Jake's schools stuff here, not that I don't want to haul books around on the train system. Jake somehow brought all that stuff by himself through the bus system to the hostel. Sounds like he had to make a couple trips in and out of the bus to get all his stuff. So I am letting him sleep.

The Expo in Shanghai is sounding less and less worth it. Tonight some people we had dinner with said the only exhibit without a line is North Korea. So we decided to stay 2 nights in Shanghai, and the 1 night in Xian, and then back to Beijing to do the Great Wall, Forbidden City, etc.

Frankly we have had a blast just walking around and taste testing the street food. But today was work. Jake and the hostel guy spent a long time trying to figure out the trains. The upshot was Jake and I had to go to the ginormous train station to pick up the tickets. Did I say it was big? This station goes for blocks. There are huge lines for everything. This is where you see the population change from the urban dwellers to the country folks. I am guessing that because of the migration of people to the urban areas, the relatives come to the city to visit. I think I heard they need visas or permits to come to the city so things do not get out of hand. You can tell from their bags where they are from. The poorer country folks use bags tied up with ropes to carry their belongings. Again, they all seem healthy, happy and content, just with less fancy things. It looks like we may have to go back to get tickets again for the other train trip and to board the train tomorrow night.

I think I need a burger. I didn't have much appetite today and I feel fine so it may be I am burned out on Chinese food. There also is very little opportunities for a good cup of Joe. Jake got some good greasy noodles for lunch but for dinner we met with a few of jakes classmates, 3 of his teachers and assorted parents. We had a tough time finding a place that would take 12 people so the students knew of a less popular place which was pretty much empty (Hmmm) and we had a nice dinner there. They basically filled a big glass lazy Susan with food and beer and we spent the night rotating the food around and eating. The students and teachers all spoke Chinese and the parents and siblings stuck to English. One of the teachers speaks English pretty well so she accompanied Jake and I after dinner and showed us a big market where they sell the “scorpion on a stick” kind of stuff. This was a big outdoor market with stalls selling (hawking) every kind of weird food item and cheap souvenir. There was scorpion on a stick, seahorses on a stick, starfish on a stick, worm looking things on a stick, you name it. I guess if you wanted one (none of us bought anything) they would take the wiggle thing and deep fat fry it for you so you knew it was fresh.

Food on a stick is big here. Street vendors have little coal fires on the outside a stall with all kind of food on a stick. Didn't see much salad or fruit on a stick though.

We also stopped at a giant grocery store and bought some fresh fruit for tomorrow and bottled water. We have been staying away from the tap water just to be safe, which has been effective to date.

The teacher that came with us I think enjoyed practicing her English so I peppered her with questions and vise versa. She grew up in the country and came to the city to go to college. She was working on a graduate degree I guess in English. [Jacob's note: I actually think her degree is teaching English as a second language, although I'm not completely sure about that...] She was an only child (one child per family) and I did not realize that if you first have a boy, you may then have a second child. Also if two only children get married, they may have 2 children. We said good by on the subway and Jake and I headed back to the hostel to get some sleep.

Yeah, a burger would taste mighty fine right about now. Maybe tomorrow I will weasel over to a Mickey D's when no one is looking...

Temple Day

Tuesday June 8, 2010

I am having a hard time keeping track of what day is what. Yesterday we visited Yong He Gong which is an amazingly beautiful Buddhist temple. We could small the incense burning from the subway stop. The incense vendors were all the way up and down the street on both sides. Most of the people there were Chinese with a few Germans on a tour bus and I think I heard Italian spoken by another group, but for the most part everyone was there “professionally”. The idea as near as I could tell was you buy a lot of incense, usually a box of 20 or so, or in some cases a jumbo box of 100 maybe (maybe if you had not been for a while or were behind somehow), There were a series of buildings each containing 3 figures and you light 3 incense sticks, bow 3 times in front of the outside of the building, throw those sticks into a metal tub with everyone else's sticks, then go inside and do the same with un-lit sticks. You then lay the unlit sticks in front of the figures and go on the the next building and repeat. The monks occasionally empty the unburned ones outside into the metal tubs and as you can imagine, there is a pretty big fire going there after the worshipers pick up. That's what you smell from the subway stop. The buildings are old, the statues are old, there are gigantic old bells everywhere and wind chimes tinkle from the roofs of the buildings. We sat and relaxed and caught-up for a while as it is a very peaceful place. The big deal is that they have the largest Buddha on earth, 60 feet tall. You walk in and all you see are legs. It is inside and it is actually hard to see because you have to look straight up at it. And it is carved out of a single sandalwood tree. No idea how the monks keep it dusted.

We got hit up to have our picture taken with a Chinese guy, Jake says this is very common and he gets asked that a lot. It's like the hello thing. They are all very nice so it is fine.

We went back to the hostel and Jake took a little nap as he did not sleep much the night before (or the 3 nights before that with exams) and he was getting a little disoriented with directions (pleasantly so). Then he took me to a vegetarian buffet for dinner which was amazing (and as Jake pointed out, sanitary). We walked up and down the streets and picked up a couple beers ($0.45 for 600ml), found our way back to the bus (it took a while), back on the subway and back to the hostel.

The buses and subway have LCD screens on them and there is news, information, and these weird little cartoons which I couldn't figure out. Jake says they are cartoons with little moral lessons like don't pass gas at dinner and don't hog the popcorn at the movies (the 2 playing today). Those are the only 2 I saw but I assume there are loftier ones as well. Good tips for everyone there.

Another strange thing, which I bet most travel logs don't tell you, but this one being very open is going to (you can skip to the next paragraph now if you would like), has to do with toilet paper. I see signs to not put toilet paper in the toilet, and my next question, and I am sure yours as well would be, where do you put the toilet paper once you have , you know, used it. Well it turns out that you are supposed to put it in the trash, which I verified in the restaurant last night (cut down on the dessert a bit for me). This is true I guess all over Beijing, maybe China. You also need to bring your own paper with you, except at places western people go (and I do mean go). I may report back on this one.

Another cartoon made reference to the problem of letting little kids pee on the street. I did not see any of that, but I did see some little guys with crotchless pants on so I think they are working on it. [Jacob's note: the crotchless pants are ubiquitous here, and the kids do a lot more than pee on the street. I once went online to further research this topic, and there were a bunch of tourists and expats that were debating the "crotchless pants system" (not their term). They seemed to be under the impression that children only donned the crotchless pants after a certain age where they could sufficiently control their bowel movements, thus greatly reducing the change of accidents. While this does seem to be the case sometimes, I still think that babies wear such kind of pants, as evidenced by an interesting scene I saw at a restaurant once. The restaurant is a pretty cheap place, the sort that often has a lot of people hanging around inside, drinking, smoking, and eating greasy food (pretty normal in China, and not as sketchy as in the US). The waitress that was serving me had brought her baby to the restaurant and, right after she brought my food to me, her baby (which she was carrying at the time) began to pee on the floor. She laughed a bit, gently scolded her baby for getting her jeans wet, and then quickly hurried the peeing youngster outside. The puddle was pretty close to where I was sitting, and remained neglected for about half an hour, before someone noticed it and wiped it up with some paper towels. For better or worse, I can't imagine something like that happening in the US...]

My iPhone so far is completely useless except for listening to music. I wasn't expecting much, but I was hoping for GPS. I need to test it with wi-fi to see what happens there. Of course no wi-fi no maps so what use is GPS? I'll report back.

Cell phones are everywhere. Everybody has them and uses them. Bike repair guys appear to be surfing the web or checking e-mail when they don't have a bike to work on. Speaking of bike repair, from what I am seeing and what Jake is telling me, a bike repair shop is usually a guy with a movable tool cart. I did see some bike dealers (electric) that had bikes torn apart outside their shop on the street so I assume there are both. These bikes get a tough workout, and it shows. The chains are all rusty and it looks like they live their lives outside, judging by the corrosion. But they are used daily, that is for sure. At the big grocery store we saw bike for sale for about $30.00, so they are inexpensive. The grocery store (big one) also has electric bikes for $200 to $400 or so.

So that's about it. Tomorrow we have to figure out what we are doing.

First Day Ruminations

Monday 6-7-10

Woke up around 7am, great night sleep (I wrote this and went back to sleep for 4 more hours). Jake is picking me up at noon so plenty of time (to sleep).

The hostel has wi-fi in the basement and an ethernet jack in the room. So some note on first impressions from yesterdays arrival.

As I said before people seem happy and relaxed. It feels very safe. We get a lot of friendly stares because we are way in the minority here and stick out like sore thumbs. Many times people will out of the blue just say “hello” which Jake says is very common. Most of the official signs (street signs, subway signs, etc) are in Chinese with English under them. From what I am seeing and what Jake says, some people could speak a little english, but with difficulty. It is odd to walk down the street having a conversation with Jake, knowing the people walking next to you have no idea what you are saying.

Transportation:

When the plane was landing I noticed there are cars, but for a city of 22 million there are not that many. The are mostly small cars and the trucks are small trucks like in Europe. The subway is very nice and well used. It was Sunday and Jake says there is a lot of activity on Sunday but nothing was overly packed. You get a card which you fill with money. They use wireless cards that you just hold up against a plastic box and it deducts the fare. The same card works for subway and bus. The fare from the airport to town was 25 RMB which is about $3.50, and is the most expensive fare I saw. All the other subway rides are 2 RMB. A bus ride is 0.4 RMB which is around 6 cents. So we got home last night for 12 cents each (2 buses). These are nice, modern subways and buses, nicer than most I have been on in the US.

There are lots of kinds of bikes. Anyone working hauling stuff around uses a 3 wheeled bike. People going back and forth to work use regular bikes, many look like old english bikes. About 3/4 of all these bikes are electric so you see people zooming around without pedaling. Last night we walked around a lot of small streets and the electric bikes are almost quieter than the pedal bikes so it is pretty neat to see bikes cruising around in the dark completely silent. Not many people have headlights on their bikes, and nobody wears helmets. There are lots of wives or friends or kids riding sidesaddle as passengers on bikes. You can tell they do it all the time because they will be talking on their cell phone at the same time.

Traffic lights:

As near as I can tell, they are recommendations, not rules. Pretty much everybody goes wherever they want whenever they want. Trucks, scooters, cars and bikes all mix and dance with the pedestrians and it all works somehow and looks safe. Jake says just do not step out in front of anything that can't stop very quickly. Buses would stop for you, but cannot. There is almost always an extra lane just for bikes, sometimes a divided lane for bikes and pedestrians. You have to stay on your toes when walking because bikes and pedestrians go both directions on these single lanes, so look both ways.

Prices:

Everything is very cheap, but there are tourist places that charge western prices (the lunch at the airport was $6 which is very high. Supper last night with a pint of beer (600ml = 20 oz) was $2 for each of us. There is no tax or tips so everything is very easy. Currency less than 1 RMB is unusual. We bought apples (we think they are apples) at a grocery store and they are sold by the pound so there was small coins returned there. Jake says they round off at 0.1 RMB so that must have been the coins.

Construction:

There is quite a bit and last night there were a few crews working under lights. We saw a bus load of construction guys getting off near their dorms I presume. Jake says they may be migrant workings coming in from the country to work.

Monday PM

Today we walked around and took in the street activity on a typical work day. We found a street that was shop after shop of wire, plumbing supplies, motors, pumps tools, etc. A real guys kind of street. All those Harbor Freight tools are here. There are lots of wire shops with every king of wire shrink wrapped in big rolls. These shops are small, more like stalls, and everybody is pretty relaxed and just sorta waiting for someone to come into their store. One stall had nothing but motors. Gear motors, stepper motors, AC motors, etc. Another stall has fans, fan blades, etc. It is not uncommon to see 2 stores on the same block selling exactly the same wire. The power here is all 240 VAC and a 2 prong American plug will plug in without the ground pin. Jake has a power strip that lets 3 prong devices plug in so I put my Swiss Army Knife away as I was about to hack off the ground lug.

As Jake says, they seem to be in that wild west mode here where there are rules and everybody sorta follows them, but the rely on the common sense of the average citizen to figure stuff out. There are loose bricks here and there that you could easily trip on, but people figure it out. Back home there would be barriers and signs but here they just leave them. People are not that aggressive here, so the drivers seem to watch out for bikes and pedestrians and vise versa. There seems to be a sense of “us” and not “me” here. The guys are not all trying to out macho each other with very few exceptions. I think this background message of “Happy” and “Love” pays off in a gentler headset. There is also a lot of integration of grandparents and children. People dote on the kids everywhere you see them. We walked past a hedged in area with loud music playing tonight. I expect a group of teens having a block party given the music, but when we cleared the hedge, we found 20 to 40 older folks dancing to the loud music in a synchronized aerobic sort-of dance. Jake says this is really common. The parks have standard kids playground stuff, slides, climbing structures, but they also have what look like guy equipment that the older folks use to exercise and stretch. Very nice stuff. The older generation seems to get a lot of respect here.

Houston, The Eagle Has Landed

Up, early, throw everything in the backpack(s) and off to the airport. Airport was pretty much empty so on the plane from Burlington, the pilot fired everything up and then announced he had to do a "system restart" which entailed turned all the power off and back on again (CTL-ALT-DEL?). Glad he got that straightened out on the tarmac. An hour later in Newark. I found coffee and alternated between walking around and reading for the 4 hour layover. At one point a family came to sit with me and all but one woman sat together and the woman sat near me, which I thought was a little odd until she started coughing up stuff. I tactfully moved and used some of the sanitizing hand stuff (man that stuff tastes bad), and moved far away. If I hear her coughing on the plane...

She was on the plane but she must have been far away, because I didn't hear her. I saw her at the baggage carousel in Beijing. Hope she feels better.

I sat on the plane with a guy from Texas who was born in China and was 1 of 4 kids to go to America. He was a mathematician and worked for.... wait for it... BP (British Petroleum). I took pity on him and agreed not to discuss the oil spill. He worked in the natural gas sector analyzing markets. After 13 hours his bottom line was, there is plenty of gas and oil, it is just going to be a lot more expensive. So start insulating you houses and looking at driving scooters...

The goods news is that the Boeing 777 had 97 movies you could watch any time you wanted, wow and I thought I wouldn't know what to do for 13+ hours. The bad news is it broke about 2 hours into the flight and the only entertainment we got was watching RedHat Linux trying to boot over and over and over for 11 hours. That's riveting stuff let me tell you, Oscar stuff!

I had 2 books and a netbook so I alternated between those 3 and nodding off for 13 hours. And talking to the BP guy. The flight goes up over the top of the earth and the map thingie worked in between the RedHat boots so you could see your progress hour after hour.

We landed to a warm 89 degrees at 2pm Beijing time (2am Vermont time), waited for the luggage (I think my backpack was the last thing to come on the carousel, but I usually think that), and lo and behold a curly haired kid named Jacob was waiting outside for me. He bought me lunch at the airport and then navigated our way to the hostel to drop everything off.

So I was ready to go to sleep but Dr Jacob said the best thing for jet lag was to stay up so we headed out and spent the rest of the day walking around, taking buses, meeting some of his school friends, learning how to dodge bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, cars and buses (note that buses take much long to stop than the others). We had dinner and a pint of cold beer, and navigated the bus system back to our neighborhood and wiggled through the narrow streets back to the hostel. Jake went back to school to finish packing and he will come collect me tomorrow at noon. Beijing is a real surprising eye-opener for me, people are gentle and happy, it feels very safe, but more on that tomorrow. It's 10 pm, I have been awake for too long and I gotta go to sleep.

A note from Jacob (writing right now): After sleeping in my school for the last night, I got back here at 11:30am, and found that our room's door was locked and the blinds closed. I had thought that dad went out (our original plan was for him to wait for me at 9am and, if I wasn't back then, he'd go walking and come back around noon), but as I was sitting and reading, one of the hotel people came and said, "Your father is asleep", and then let me in. "What time is it", a voice drowsily asked me. ''11:30", I reply. He says that he got up at 7 for a bit, but decided to take a "quick nap" before taking a shower. All in all, ~12-13 hours of sleep?

Another note: the picture above is our toilet, which happens to look like a shrine to some pantheon of ancient gods. I'd like to point out that the two flush buttons (for the numbers 1 and 2), which normally look like a full and a half moon, on this toilet are an ornate (gilded) dragon and phoenix. Or... phoenix and dragon? In any event (I'm not contemplating this further), it's a nice toilet.

I packed up tonight and now of course can't sleep wondering what I forgot. Chatted with Jake and am getting more excited to see him again. As with the motorcycle trip, I alternate back and forth with taking too little and too much (somewhere between 5 lbs and 200 lbs). Jake says the plugs sorta work with 2 prong US devices (at 240 I think) so should be ok there. Of course you realize that most of the electronic thingies I am taking were made in China and shipped here, and I am just taking them back to where they came from. I think I can buy whatever I forget there.

Every time I fly somewhere, I think how incredible what I am doing relative to people travelling in past time. The Dutch explorers, Columbus, Magellan, those Irish and German immigrants coming to America on boats, Teddy Roosevelt's vacations to Europe, all required an enormous amount of resources to travel this far, and in my generation all you do is save up, buy this little piece of paper, and 13 hours later you are on the other side of the earth. This of course coming from one of the lucky citizens of one of the countries who can afford to do this.

I am very grateful to be able to do this. I do not take this for granted.

I will also be thankful to have my very own interpreter to greet me at the airport. A long day in airports and airplanes tomorrow. Can't wait for those pretzels!!

Shots

Today I straightened out the shot thing. It's amazing when you get the right person. After being referred around from office to office to website and back, my doctors nurse figured everything out and I get the shot (I love shots (not)) tomorrow for HEP A. They also have some other things they might want me to take (you know, stomach stuff).

The web tells you everything from "don't worry about it" to "you will be lucky to live long enough to get to the baggage carousel". I was thinking today that I want Spock from Star Trek on the other end giving me crisp, accurate data like "You have a 1 in 947 chance of contracting Hepatitis without the shot, and a 1 in 11,232 chance with it". After reading all this stuff, I think I will stay away from "sketchy" food. I did wait until the last minute so "my bad", but not too bad. I can sleep tonight. Thank you nurse from the health center.

So I need to figure out what to take. Clothes, not too many, some electronic gadgets, not too many, a couple good books (small ones), teeth scrubbing and face scraping stuff. We may need to carry everything as we are not sure if there is any place to leave stuff so I'll take a big backpack with a small pack inside (day trips). The average high this time of year is upper 80's and lows are mid 60's so no long-johns required here. I have comfy sneakers that should do the trick.

I have been reading a bit of Chinese history and in some respects, they have had more changes by far than we have in our brand new country. All those dynasties, the last emperor, Mao, and then the new go-go economy. I am very interested in meeting folks there and smiling and making silly hand gestures at them. How do they cut steak with chopsticks? What's the waving cat all about? And do those numbered meals in Chinese restaurants correspond to the same numbers over there or will I need a US meal number to Chinese meal number decoder ring of some kind. So many questions to be answered.

I video chatted with Jake today and he bought train tickets to Shanghai. They didn't have sleeper seats, but he assured me the train was pretty comfy. It's a high speed train so not sure what that means.

Gotta rest up for my shot tomorrow, oh boy!!

Welcome to the blog

So I am going to see my favorite son in China for 2 weeks. (The inside joke here is that I have a daughter and a son and when they were young they each wanted me to address then as my favorite child, so the joke was always been that they are each my favorite son or my favorite daughter). Jake has been there since January doing an immersion language semester abroad and he is done and ready to return. So he kindly invited me to come sightsee around China a bit.

I did a blog for the 2 week motorcycle trip I did with my brother and found blogging a nice way to record where you have been, what you have seen and what you were thinking, a sort of written scrapbook, so here I am again.

I have a ton of vacation accumulated since I sort-of neglected to take any time off for a year (or 2) and I lose it if I don't use it. The timing was now or never since the company I work for is about to get slammed with projects so I am cramming in some time off before the tsunami begins.

The Chinese characters above mean (according to Google) "son" (Jacob can correct me if not).

I do not speak a lick of Chinese and I have certainly never been to Asia. I am of course nervous and excited all at once (anxious?). We are roughly going to spend the first and last part in Beijing with a trip to Shanghai in the middle (there goes that crazy planning gene again). Jake and I both share the gift of long term planning (not), so nothing is set in stone as far as where we are going.

The world expo is in Shanghai and I had read a couple weeks ago that it was wall to wall people so we will see if we can get in, or at least close enough to see the excitement.

I gotta rest up for some very long flights!!