The End

This past week we wrapped up finals (written Chinese, spoken Chinese, a final Chinese essay, and a research paper written in English) and since then have been doing all the Nanjing things that I was supposed to but had not yet done.  Pictured here is Sun Yat-Sen's mausoleum at Purple Mountain, considered by Guomindang and Communists alike as the father of modern China.

In addition, we spent 6 hours over the last two days at the same tea shop, buying wonderful tea after discussing everything under the sun with the owners.  Apparently our Chinese is now good enough to banter on with natives about Chinese class relations, the owner's hopes for his new son, why Americans are excited about Obama, and social mobility in our respective countries (in addition to the simpler things in life, like jointly making fun of Canadians and Britons).  I'm having a rough time telling all my program mates good-bye (you know those war-buddy kinds of friendships forged in adversity), but am pretty ready to return home.  

Home Stretch

Sorry for the gap in posts; it's been pretty busy around here as we gear up for our final two weeks.  I have one week of class left before a week of finals, then I head home on December 14.  That flight should be a fun one--I'll be spending around 20 hours in the air while only moving around 8 hours forward in time.  In fact, I'll be landing at LAX one hour before I left Nanjing.

A couple weeks back I finally made my trek into Shanghai to see the sights and smell the tea.  While a beautiful city, I'd still recommend Nanjing or Beijing as a better locale for getting the "feel" of China.  While you can still find some jiaozi dumplings on the street in Shanghai, they're always going to be right next to a McDonald's or a Starbucks.  That said, we went to a giant tea market with open-air barrels of the stuff all around.  I picked up some amazing wulong partially-fermented tea that I'm trying to make last back to the states.  No promises. 

The Shanghai Museum is an especially cool spot.  My favorite exhibit was the collection of foreign currencies exchanged on the silk road, ranging from Assyrian to Greek to Roman to kingdoms that don't seem to exist in any other historical records.  

Pictured are The Bund in Shanghai along the Huangpu River and some tea from the Datong Tea Market.  

Shangrila, Songzanlin Temple, Potatso National Park, Stone Card Mountain

After rising several thousand feet in elevation from Tiger Leaping Gorge, we found ourselves in Shangrila ("Shang Ge Li La"), renamed as such after the mystical city from Lost Horizons.  We first visited the Songzanlin Buddhist temple upon a hillside overlooking the city.  Filled with the uniquely cool Tibetan Buddhist iconography and monks aging from 14 to 80, it was a good dose of a quieter, more peaceful China before diving back into the city.

Luckily, we wouldn't have to stay in the city for long.  In what was easily the most beautiful portion of the trip, we headed into Potatso National Park, reminding us again that China wasn't all polluted and still had natural beauty.  Blue water, green grass and trees, and a brilliantly clear, blue sky raised our spirits ever higher.  Heading back to Shangrila for the night, we tra

veled out to the edge of town to join a Tibetan family's quasi-dinner party, a fascinatingly ethnic affair with dancing, roasted whole lambs, and lots and lots of singing, laughing, and chanting.  To top the night off, we walked outside to find a sky almost untouched by light pollution, for the first time in months being able to see stars so clearly that the Milky Way was a visible band from horizon to horizon.

The next day, we took the "Longest Cable Car in Asia" to the various elevations (including the summit) of Stone Card Snow Mountain outside of Shangrila.  Offering a gorgeous view of the Himalayas (and setting me a new elevation record at 14,600 feet), the mountain capped off what was a great last travel break before we settle in for the final month of classes and finals here in Nanjing. 

You can find the album of these adventures here.

Lijiang, Blue Moon Lake, Tiger Leaping Gorge

We left Sichuan Province for Yunan (in southwest China, bordering Tibet), eventually settling in at the old canal town of Lijiang.  We were housed and spent most of our time in the Old Town, notable for cobblestone streets that snaked over canals and between long boulevards of wooden ships and squares.  So began several days of consistent rain, leaving us over the next few days in various stages of dampness.  It was there that I picked up the purchase of my trip--a hand-made Tibetan leather hat for $2.  Thank you, artificially devalued Chinese currency.

The hostel we stayed at was nestled in the middle of a courtyard in Lijiang.  Though gorgeous and composed almost entirely of carved, stained wood and stone, the only source of heat it had was electric blankets under the sheets of our beds.  As Lijiang is beginning to near Tibet and the Himalayas, its elevation and weather conspired against our thermal security.  Luckily, the hostel's giant dog, Beckham (a real dog, which are more common out in the west of China than the overbred little toys that dominate eastern China), provided us with warmth and entertainment in our comings and goings over the next couple days.

We ventured outside of the city first for what proved to be a bizarre and over-produced performance commemorating the many minorities of China (non-Han minorities make up around 7% of the total population).  Outside of Blue Moon Lake, a giant stage equipped with smoke machines, artificial waterfalls, and gigantic hidden speakers played host to dozens of "minority performers" that demonstrated 90 minutes of exquisitely coordinated and synchronized dances and demonstrations with occasional narrations.  By "occasional," I mean very occasional and often nonsensical, vague, and offering no real information about said "minorities."  I guess I went into a performance about fostering understanding of China's minorities expecting to know something more about China's minorities.  Who knew? 

Luckily, the next few sights saved the day.  Blue Moon Lake was a quick but gorgeous park we stopped by, reminding us that natural beauty did indeed still exist outside of China's big cities.  Some (hopefully) sure-footed yaks were available for rent to ride across the fairly fast-moving waters that cascaded down from the mountains.  Despite there being hundreds of Chinese tourists present, of a dozen yaks available, it was only one of my fellow program participants that took the yaks up on it while we were there.

We later arrived a the big one: Tiger Leaping Gorge.  As the Yangtze surges through the area's river valley, it is particularly violent and majestic at the location of the Tiger Leaping Gorge.  A half-hour of sometimes-rickety steps both down to and back up from the precipice of the rapids, the Gorge continued to provide us with some much-needed and long-awaited reminder that there is still a China that isn't caked in smog and filled with aggressive, honking drivers. 

You can find the whole album here.

Chengdu

Just got back from my whirlwind adventure through Sichuan and Yunan provinces.  As I got some space to cover between Pandas and the Himalayas, I'll break the trip into a couple bite-sized pieces.

After flying from Nanjing to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, the first thing we saw was a traditional tea show at a nearby Buddhist monastery.  Each variety of tea had different but strikingly complex methods of preparation, including stylistic cleansing of utensils using boiling water down to the intricate multi-pot steeping process, each stage punctuated by prayers.

After sampling some of the local cuisine renowned for its spiciness (it wasn't that spicy), we hit up the Panda Base Breeding and Research Center.  The utterances of "awww" quickly became innumerable as we toured adult, adolescent, and youth enclosures.  While we usually would have had the opportunity to pay an obscene amount of money to hold a panda cub, we were luckily relieved of this temptation by the cubs too thoroughly incensing themselves in a rather vicious-looking two-on-one fight.  It was, however, the cutest vicious two-on-one fight I've ever seen.  

That night we sampled the local Sichuan Opera, which, as it turns out, is actually a very brief opera interrupted by an extended (and at times bizarre and atonal) talent show composed of marionettes, trumpet and erhu players, and shadow puppets.  The actual opera was equally bizarre, featuring what appeared to be an old woman forcing an old dunce to perform various difficult tasks with a burning basin lamp balanced on his head.  The woman yelled a string of sentences at the dunce as he crawled backwards under a table while balancing said lamp, causing the Chinese around us to burst into laughter.  Upon asking one of our Chinese program mates what the woman had said, she replied (between further bouts of laughter) simply that the woman had told the dunce to crawl backwards under the table while balancing the lamp.  Chinese humor continues to elude me.

The next day we went to the Jianchuan Museum cluster outside of Chengdu.  I visited The Hall of the Sichuan Army in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, which housed photographs and artifacts from the Sichuan branch of the Chinese army in WWII.  One photograph's caption spoke of a convoy of Sichuan "supply ships" heading to the front lines (the photograph was of a line of donkeys).  The just-completed Chengdu Earthquake Museum housed "relics" from this past spring's catastrophic earthquake, ranging from a boat used to rescue victims from the nearby river to a grandfather clock that stopped at the exact moment the earthquake hit. 

We next visited the San Xingdui Museum, which housed artifacts from the still-shrouded-in-mystery Shu culture.  Predating the Yellow River Valley civilization that many originally thought was the birthplace of Chinese civilization, the place is filled with strikingly unique bronze-cast figures, resembling few other image motifs found in primary Chinese history. 

Finally, we visited Chengdu's excellent Daoist temple before setting out for Shangrila. 

You can see the complete Chengdu album here.  The brief videos below are of the traditional tea show, a giant panda at the Panda Base, and one of the San Xingdui statues. 

In Chengdu

Things were a bit rushed in the past week as we wrapped up midterms and shipped out for Chengdu.  I'm now here in Sichuan province, where we're touring the sights and surviving the exceptionally spicy food for a few days before shipping on over to Yunan province (to stop by Tiger Leaping Gorge and Shangrila, among others).  I'll be on the road for the next 8-9 days, but should have some fun photos to put up at that point. 

Part Three: Finishing up Beijing, Luoyang

Beijing Part 2

Beijing Part 1

Our next stop was the one absolutely-positively-must-see sight of Beijing: The Great Wall.  It did not disappoint; we decided to swallow our language-cred pride and went ahead and visited Badaling, the most touristy, but most scenic segment of the Great Wall in the Beijing area.  It was indeed great and gorgeous--but the proximity to National Day meant we were enveloped by masses and masses of people.  At several points we were literally in a people jam; shoulder-to-shoulder pressed up against thousands of other Chinese, unable to move for 10 minutes at a time.  Luckily we were able to jump out over an exit to the outside of the wall and double back to another entrance on our way out.  While on the outside of the wall, we spotted a few scraggly-looking hikers coming up the mountainside, presumably so they wouldn't have to pay the admission fee.  The hillside leading up the wall is pretty steep--we were impressed.

That night we patroned the well-reputed muslim night market in downtown Beijing.  Amid the hustle and bustle of hundreds of other hungry citizens, we squeezed our way to the front of the crowds around the stands and yelled our order until it was acknowledged and given to us, while other stands called after us for our attention.  We stuffed ourselves full of numerous delicious things, many of which we couldn't readily identify, before heading home.  I passed on skewered scorpions and silk worms, but in retrospect I regret not giving them a try. 

On our last day in Beijing we went to the Summer Palace complex, a giant and beautiful park where the imperial family could escape their hordes of subjects and find refuge.  Apart from the fascinating hillside Buddhist temple, it was primarily an homage to imperial excess and isolation, including the stone boat that Dowager Cixi built to justify misappropriating naval funds for the expansion of the palace complex.

That night we set out on a night train for Luoyang (getting there, we happened to hail the Cab Driver from Hell; he weaved and careened down pedestrian thoroughfares, narrowly avoiding killing dozens of people, even concluding with a maniacal cackle as we stumbled terrified out of the car).  Unfortunately, this consisted of a 10-hour "hard seat" train ride, due to the sheer masses of people traveling that week.  The seats consisted of a bench with a vertical board behind you as a seat rest; there was no moulded headrest to lean against, no ability to recline, and no walls to rest one's head against.  It was the most hellish experience I have had yet while traveling, though I am kept from wallowing too long in self-pity by the memory of the "no-seat ticket" holders who stood in the aisles--literally stood, as they had been packed in like sardines--for those 10 hours.  A small man was seated next to me with his young child on his knee; a couple hours into the ride, they got up and squeezed their way underneath the bench we were seated on, laying on the floor beneath me as a brief rush ensued among the standing passengers to take his now-vacant seat.

Natan and I arrived in Luoyang exhausted, sore, and irritable.  After trying to call our hostel, and then hunting down an internet bar to email them, we found that both the phone number and email address for the hostel we had been booked to stay at no longer existed.  Combined with a walk around Luoyang revealing it to be a very sorry little city, we were convinced to get right back in line and bought a train ticket home for that very night (this time, a hard sleeper--so we would have beds).  We condensed our stay on Luoyang to one day rather easily, catching a bus out to the Longmen Grottoes by mid-morning.

The Longmen Grottoes proved to be worth it all.  Thousands of caves, nooks, and cliffsides were filled and covered with buddhist statues, carvings, and sutra inscriptions.  They ranged in size from thousands of thumb-sized buddhas adorning a cave's interior to the dozens-of-feet-tall Fengxian Temple cliffside, sporting a dozen gigantic buddha and bodhisattva statues.  

You can find a complete album of my last couple days in Beijing and our trip out to the Longmen Grottoes here.

Pictured below is me and the Great Wall, Dowager Cixi's stone boat (pronounced roughly "tsee-schee," Mr. Harms), Natan and I in front of one of the smaller stone Buddha statues at the Longmen Grottoes, two giant bodhisattvas at the Fengxian Temple part of the Grottoes, and a brief video of said temple.