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. 

Delay

Sorry for the delay in getting my final leg of Beijing and Luoyang up.  The intertubes around here have for the past several days become cripplingly slow and reset all connections every few minutes, leaving me unable to upload or access any meaningful amount of media.  They say it should improve in the next few days.

A brief anecdote until then: iTunes, mercifully, allows one to pause and resume downloads, resulting in us being able to, over the course of a couple days, download the presidential and vice presidential debates.  It's been a pretty good source of entertainment as we crowd around someone's laptop for an hour and a half, and many of our Chinese roommates have also been enraptured by the show, never before having seen these kinds of things happen, much less be televised.  

Beijing, Part 2: Forbidden City, Jingshan Park

Beijing, Part 1: Tiananmen Square, Temple of Heaven

As we ventured into the Forbidden City (be sure to devote most of a day to its exploration), its sheer size and scope is the most surprising part.  The iconic image of the Forbidden City, one of its inner gates towards the Palace Museum, is a very, very small part of the entire complex.  The City is filled with dozens of nooks, crannies, parks, and mini-palaces designed to allow its royal inhabitants ever-greater peace and isolation from life on the outside.  

It's easy to get lost or never make your way to the main points, as Natan and I wandered through corridor after hall after walkway, leading to ever more numerous courtyards covered with intricate and beautiful ceramics and stone carvings.  Feeling a bit overwhelmed we finally exited through the rear of the palace only to see Jingshan Park towering above us.  Looking forward to a bit of open air with some actual vegetation in place of towering marble or exquisite ceramics, we leisurely made our way through the historic park to the hilltop pavilion.

After meandering through north-central Beijing (where we encountered the Most Idyllic Scene Ever), we called it a night before preparing for the Great Wall the next day. 

Below are images of me at the Forbidden City and Jingshan Park as one exits said City, as well as a brief video from inside one of the major pavilions.  The full Part 2 gallery can be found here.

 

Beijing, Part 1: Tiananmen Square, Temple of Heaven

I just got back from my amazing/hellish independent travel break to Beijing and Luoyang.  I'm going to be splitting my journaling into multiple easily-digestible (for you and me both) chunks, and will hopefully have all of them done in the next day or two. 

My program-mate Natan and I, warned of the difficulty of traveling during Golden Week in China (when roughly the population of the United States will all be using the national rail system at the same time), purchased our tickets from Nanjing to Beijing well over a week ahead of time.  As with Chinese rail you can 1) only buy tickets in person at the train station or post office and 2) can only buy tickets departing from the city in which you are buying them, we knew that this would be this would likely be the most comfortable leg of the trip during Golden Week (indeed, it was a "soft sleeper," with beds stacked 2-high to a berth) and cherished it as such.  We were very right.  But more on that later.

Upon arriving early in the morning on Saturday in Beijing, we observed the train station and its surroundings to be describable only as "epic," especially as by extraordinary happenstance, our first day ever in Beijing turned out to be one of their rare and valued "blue sky days" (thank you Olympic pollution crackdown!).  We meandered around downtown enjoying the wonderful weather before catching the subway to Tiananmen Square.  We gawked at the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, the Monument to the People's Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, and of course the largest public square in the world's namesake, the Gate of Heavenly Peace (adorned with a 20-foot-tall portrait of the Chairman himself).

After locating our hostel (dramatically closer than we thought it was--a mere 15 minute walk from Tiananmen!) and dropping off our things, we hopped on over to the Temple of Heaven.  A great old Taoist temple from the 1400's, it underwent a $6 million renovation ahead of the Olympics, and is now in gleaming, tip-top shape, having seen its original colorings ruthlessly stripped away and reproduced as accurately (and sealed as thoroughly) as possible.  The resulting feeling is a bit odd--while it is glimmering and beautiful, it looks far too new and superficial for its age and stature in history.

We then went on to sample a couple of Beijing's signature dishes--a fried leg of lamb and, of course, Peking Roast Duck.  The mistake made was doing both at the same meal, resulting in far too much food. 

In addition to the pictures below (Great Hall of the People,  lamb of leg/Peking Duck, Temple of Heaven) and a brief video of Tiananmen Square, you can view the rest of the pictures from our first day in Beijing here.