Riding through Rice Paddies in the Rain

The next morning we were a little groggy from our tossing and turning, but still managed to get downstairs before 9 am. We met another guest who was also still without power. The poor girl working at the bar had no idea we didn't have power, despite a note from Alf that was slipped under our doors stating that they were working on it. Well, as of 9 am we still had no power and there was no one actively working on it. The other guest and I suggested thay she try flipping the breakers that were obviously tripped. Not such a good idea since the entire bar lost power. The girl was totally freaking out a couple of guys that had been playing pool tried to help. The breakers at the outside service panel had tripped. it was a very sketchy circuit since the inside breaker, which should have been the first to go, was still okay and the outside service panel had breakers which were not even secured in the box! One of the pool players was trying to use chopsticks to hold the breaker in place while he flipped the breaker.. all this while standing in the rain!!

Luckily some guy cam by who was able to fix the problem. I don't know if he was the repair man or simply a neighbour but by the time we got back from breakfast we had power.

For breakfast Tanny finally got her traditional noodle breakfast which was delicious. It was skinny rice noodles in a broth with stewed tomatos and a couple other green veggies. I had yoghurt with peanuts, bananas and musli.

The rain was pretty persistant unfortunately. Our only plans for the day were to bike through rice paddies in the surrounding towns and ride a bamboo raft. By about 11:00 it looked like the rain was subsiding so we rented a tandem bike and set off! Well, that makes it seem faster than it was. We were pretty wobbly at the start, but we got the hang of it quickly and started crusing through the streets. Even though it's a small town, the drivers were still crazy and I think I scared Tanny with some of my biking but I tried my best to blend in.

We only had a couple of streets to take to get out of town but our map was horribly undetailed and not to scale. We were stopped at a corner consulting our map in the pouring rain when a young girl stopped beside us to help. She didn't speak much English but we told here where we wanted to go and got some directions we didn't quite understand. We must have looked pretty sad standing in the rain (it was pouring again) because when we started again she followed us on her bike. We missed the turn off she had indicated and she shouted at us to turn. She accompanied us for the rest of our trip and was a very cute little tour guide. She was probably about 12 years old and was propely attired in a waterproof poncho vs. my outfit of a bike jersey and shorts and Tanny's wind breaker. I think she thought we were crazy.

We biked for about an hour and made our way to Yima - the next town. On the way we passed a lot of local residences (non-descript apartment buildings) and lots of rice paddies! I'm so disappointed that we couldn't have had a nice day there to really enjoy the scenery because it was fantastic.

Along the way we chatted with Miss Chiu (our new friend) but I don't think we understood much of what we said to each other.

Once we got to Yima we met a gaggle of old ladies keen to sell us souvenirs. As soon as we stopped our bike we were surrounded by them selling every thing from wooden chicken toys to flower wreaths.. even in the pouring rain. Again, by not wearing any rain jacket I'm sure I gave them a good story for their friends... the crazy white biker guy who was drenched to the bone.

When we got back to town we wanted to treat Miss Chiu to something for being our tour guide in the pouring rain, but she didn't want anything we offered so we gave here a Loony and that made her pretty happy. It was sad to say bye to her... hopefully she had as much fun as we did.

We tried to dry out a bit at the hotel before supper and made plans for the next leg of our trip. Eventually we set out on the town for a snack, followed by supper and more souvenirs. Tanny got a bamboo flute that she'd been eyeing earlier.

For a snack we had milkshakes (banana and chocolate) and fried banana slices and enoyed watching a couple of mice run around the restaurant (hmmm) while we wrote some postcards (check the mail!). For supper we had beef stirfry with "seasonal vegetables" (aka onions and garlic).

I found a good movie on TV that had English subtitles: Fist of Legend with Jet Li. An awesome kung-fu movie!!

The rain kept up all through the night.

Li River Lazyness

Our boat trip down the Li River started with a mini-bus pick-up at our hotel. Four other passengers were picked up with us... all foreigners. Our tour guide was an odd fellow named Niko. He had an odd way of speaking and VERY bad jokes. For example "The Li River starts at Cat Mountain - not Brokeback Mountain - that's for gays." Uh huh. From our tour guide. Niko gave us panda stickers to wear and filled us in a little on the history of the Li River (see previous joke as an example). After about 30 minutes we arrived at the dock where we joined many other tour groups swarming inside the adjoining souvenir shop. About five boats were waiting to take us away. Inside the boat we were seated according to our tour group, although the seating was only required at lunch.

The Li River is a very wide, brown river. Our boat was a double-decker little cruise ship with an open kitchen in the back. As we set out down the river we watched the cooks on the boats ahead of us prepare lunch.

It was a foggy day (as most have been recently) and the karst (limestone) moutains loomed in the mist on either side of the river. The only other mountain I've seen that comes close to the shape of thes mountains is Gibraltor in Spain. The limestone mountains are jagged and steep with many peaks in close proximity. Most are covered in a carpet of trees and shrubs, but many face the river with a sheer bald rocky face dotted with caves. If you've ever seen any traditional ink paintings of mountains in China, these are the moutains that were painted.

The most startling thing about the trip was our first encounter with a bamboo rat. Our boat was cruising at a steady clip down the center of the river. About a dozen metres ahead and to one side were two men on a bamboo raft - fishing we assumed. However, as we approached, the two men started frantically moving their raft towards our boat. It looked like a suicide attempt - they were on a fast and direct route to collide with our boat which, despite our alarm, continued in a straight line bearing down on the raft's trajectory. As the raft disappeared from our view beneath our boat we rushed to the side in horror. I actually had visions of pirates raiding our boat a la "Life Aquatic". That thought was actually a little closer to the truth that a suicide mission as we saw the rafters cunningly latch onto our boat and attempt to sell carved Buddha statues through the windows. That raft was the first of many enterprising pairs of raft vendors we encounter along the 50 km stretch of the Li River.

As we drifted along the river we also encountered legitimate vendors as other boats delivered chickens, fish and vegetables to the boat's kitchen. Whenever we crossed behind another tour boat we'd catch a whiff of something yummy cooking.

When lunch was served we were a little disappointed to find that our tour group did not get any fish, but the Chinese tour group got a lot of fish and seafood for a price that was half of ours. Next time we'll take the Chinese tour since we didn't get much tour info on the boat anyway. Nevertheless, our lunch was still tasty: fried chicken, fried peanuts, spicy tofu, dumplings, soup, bean sprouts and rice plus bananas for dessert. We sat with a friendly guy from Spain who was travelling the world and on his way to Hong Kong. He had fallen in love with a girl from Guilin earlier on his trip and had just left her for the rest of his trip.

Somewhat related to our boat lunch, I just realised that I forgot to mention our breakfast adventure. The hotel has two restaurants: a Chinese one and a Western one. We wanted to sample the traditional noodles local to the area and went to the Chinese restaurant. It was packed! I think we confused and frustrated the Maitre D'. Apparently we needed a coupon to eat there and didn't have one or speak Chinese. She sent us up two floors to the other restaurant. When we got there and realised that it was a Western breakfast we went back down and offered to pay at the Chinese restaurant where they apparently had no means of accepting payment, so we were again sent two floors up to the Western restaurant. Breakfast there costs 65 RMB each. Compared to our other breakfast (about 2 RMB total) it was a huge rip-off so we left the hotel in search of a local spot. Unfortunately none were nearby and we were quickly running out of time before the tour bus came so we finally admitted defeated and ate our most expensive meal so far: eggs, toast and fruit!

Back to the Li River.

The only thing left to say is that I felt like we were in Apocalypse Now, floating down the river with unseen enemies lurking in the shadows along the shore. Tanny thought I was being a little too horror-movie-minded.

Shortly after lunch we arrived at Yangshou, which the Lonely Planet describes as a sleepy backpackers' haven. After we pushed through the crowd of vendors lining the road up to town, my first impression was that it was the perfect stereotype of my imaginary China. A small town with tile-roofed houses lining cobble-stone streets rising out of the limestone mountains and surrounded by fields of rice paddies. There were even people with cone hats! On closer inspection it was more like a Chinese Whistler with bars, hotels and boutiques in a natural setting. Most restaurants serve more Western food than Chinese and the only thing sleepy is the hung-over backpackers.

Our guest house - the Buffalo Bar - was only a couple of years old and our room had a very modern Asian theme - very stylish! The guesthouse was situated above a bar and run by an Aussie (Alf) and his Chinese wife. Alf used to work for a tour company here, got married and started the bar and guesthouse - really nice guy. At 120 RMB / night it was pretty cheap although apparently expensive for Yangshou.

After checking in we decided to tour the town. We found a bike rental place, travel agents and a bank, then went looking for souvenirs which Yangshou has in abundance. It was raining off and on and we got pretty soaked but the rain was also refreshing.

Numerous ladies walked the streets selling postcards, ponchos and umbrellas - everyone was very enterprising! We resisted those souvenirs but I couldn't resist one shop - the only man with gongs! My search was over. I quickly found one that I liked and started the bargaining process. He started at 750 RMB and we bartered on a pad of paper to 550 RMB - 50 over my starting point which I later realised was way too high -- I was just so excited! I now know that there is the white guy price, the Chinese tourist price and the real price, each being about half of the previous price. So really I should have started at 150 RMB. Oh well! He was a funny bald man with no teeth and after the sale he invited us into his house to see his other treasures (of course -- he thinks we'll buy anything if we buy a rusty gong for 550). He had two rooms full in a very spartan house. He couldn't talk us into buying anything more. When we put my 550 into his bundle of cash we realised that he rakes it in - the man's a souvenir genius! Oh - when I asked him how old the gong was, he told me it's 200 years old - a bargain for something so old!

Later in the evening Tanny did a better job bargaining for two pillow cases: 60 RMB for two versus the asking price of 85 RMB each (for white people) and 45 RMB each (for Chinese people).

It ended up raining very heavily that evening so we wimped out and ate at the Buffalo Bar. They had a very extensive menu with more than 50 dishes, both Western and Chinese. I wimped out further and had a burger while Tanny had the local specialty: beer fish -- so fresh that the fish was delivered to the bar by a guy on a motorcycle while we were waiting!

That night wasn't the best for sleeping. The bars across the street from our guesthouse were blaring dance music from 12 to 2, followed by someone's drunken karaoke. We then lost power, and therefore air conditioning at about 2:30 and lay in the sweltering heat. A rough night indeed.

Guilin

Our next stop was a quick one: Guilin. This is really just a launching point into our rice paddy adventures. It's also the major city on the Li River and the beginning of many cruises down the river into the Karst mountains... but that story is for my next entry.

We decided that we needed a nicer hotel after the hot and stinky room in Chengdu so we booked a night at a three star hotel this time. It was very nice! We were actually lucky to get a hotel since we forgot it was Friday.

Guilin was literally a breath of fresh air after Chengdu. The population is still 170 million, but it felt like a smaller town. Our hotel was across from the Li River and there was a pedesterian walkway alongside the river. After checking into the hotel we wandered along the river to Elephant Trunk Hill. It seemed to almost be a resort town as there were many swimming spots along both banks of the river and tons of people swimming. Also a great number of people fishing, but without much luck.

The walk to Elephant Trunk Hill took us about 30 minutes. The main attraction (as you may have guessed) is a cliff protruding into the water that looks like an elephant with it's trunk in the water. It's a huge tourist attraction with the requisite number of souvenir vendors. There was even a guy with a trained monkey looking for money for photos.

There were a lot of people offering rides on their bamboo rafts, or a fish dinner on board the rafts. We took the cheap approach and just walked around the park and under the trunk of the "elephant". The park was nice on its own with elephant themed statues and benches.

The only other adventure this night was our dinner, which was very well summed up in this email by Tanny:

well, we took too long resting, and didn't get back out for dinner until almost 8pm. pretty late for dinner by the looks of the restaurants we saw. we finally found a restaurant with people still eating, and went in. the waitress showed us our seats, gave me the *chinese only* menu, and stood beside me waiting for my order. let me tell you, that's a lot of pressure. so i was browsing the menu, and picked some friday special - with rice and ribs, i think- and picked something from the local specialty page - something with meat, i was careful not to pick anything that has seafood, or organs. so we waited and waited, and the waitress brought us soup. i was confused - didn't think i ordered soup, but maybe i read it wrong. and we ate it and it was yummy. and then we got the other dish - some sort of meat pattie in a bit of broth. looked ok. smelled like pork. so i took a bite, and there was something crunchy in it - like bones. I panicked for a sec and thought i had ordered snake by accident. i tried to look all non-chalant so josh would try it too. but he knew something was up, but he tried a small bite anyway. we decided that it smelled and looked like ground pork, but the bone thing was a little alarming. i took another spoonful from the dish and scooped up something black and round. josh asked, 'is that a bird's head?' i took a look and said, 'why yes it is.' josh stopped eating at that point, i kept trying to eat a little bit at a time - afterall, it is the local specialty. after this josh kept hypothesizing on what i'm actually eating. in the guidebook, it mentioned all the weird local delicacy, like snake, and rats. that definitely did NOT help me eat the food. anyway, i ate all i could and asked for the bill. before we left, i asked the waitress for the menu again so i can write down the words in chinese so i can get it probably translated when i get home. no need - i know the words. we got sparrow with steamed meat pie. i got the meat pie part but managed to miss the sparrow when i ordered. apparently, we were quite the attraction at the restaurant, the guys at the other table kept looking over at us, and when i asked for the menu at the end, everyone was looking at me wondering what i was up to. one guy even got up from his table to hold the menu for me as i was writing - what a gentleman.

PANDAS!

Now the day Tanny has been waiting for... the day we see the giant pandas.

We woke up at 6 am and went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Most people had tickets for a free breakfast, but our discounted room did not include them. It looked like a buffet breakfast with Chinese foods so I went up to fill my plate while Tanny guarded our table. As I was looking over the buffet, a worried looking member of the wait-staff hurried over to me and told me that it was the Chinese breakfast, not the English one. I said that it was okay and piled up my plate. I went back to the table and Tanny went to the buffet. While I was waiting for her, one of the wait staff brought Tanny an English breakfast of eggs and toast, but didn't bring one for me. I think it's now official that I'm more Chinese than Tanny. She disputes this claim of course.

Breakfast was quite tasty. I had spicy noodles, plain buns and pickled peppers. A little spicier than my standard cereal, but it apparently helps you battle the humidity.

Ok, back to pandas.

We got a more official looking mini-bus for this trip, but, like most Chinese vehicles we've seen, there were no seatbelts in the back. Tanny and I had the pleasure of riding in the back and had at least one trip into the air (about 5 cm!) as we zoomed over a bump in the road. I really wanted to get a picture of our driver's technique, but I couldn't capture it. The people in front of us (two people from Austin who were extremely insistant that we know they weren't from Texas originally) were terrified of the ride to the panda reserve, but Tanny and I were getting more used to Chinese traffic.

The panda breeding center is a huge park located about a half hour outside Chengdu. It's a fantastic park full of bamboo trees and man-made caves for the pandas to play and sleep in. They have both the giant black & white pandas as well as the smaller red pandas. It's a little more like a zoo than I expected, but the living areas are very expansive and more natural than a zoo. Most of the time the pandas just ate, slept or scratched their backs on some bamboo. Even I thought they were cute.

I think Tanny took two rolls of film in ten minutes.

It poured pretty heavily after we had been there for an hour so we watched a documentary on the breeding research. The most interesting thing to me is how startled the first time mothers are and how quickly the babies "pop" out. The really just squirt out and land on the floor, like a little pink weasle. One mother jumped back she was so scared. Another one sort of swatted the baby around the floor, not really sure what it was. Lucikly the staff rush in a take the babies away before gradually re-introducing them. Second-time mothers know what to expect and actually carry the baby in their paws for the first few months.

After the documentary it was still raining so we headed to the panda museum and souvenir shop for Tanny's first panda purse of the trip.

Back in Chengdu we decided to head to the Buddhist temple for a vegetarian lunch. We started walking in the direction that we thought would bring us to the right bus stop, but ended up walking the whole there (a couple of km). It made for a nice, if not confusing, walk. Tanny also found another panda purse.

I'm so glad Tanny can read Chinese... we needed the help finding out where we were!! I would have been absolutely lost without her.

The temple was quite different from the lama temple in Beijing. For one, it was very commericialised in parts. There are two huge tea rooms/patios and a big restaurant. I sort of imagined us sitting on the floor next to some monk, talking about the meaning of life, sipping tea and eating tofu, but it was just a restaurant with some cafeteria-esque wait staff. Oh well - the food was yummy. We had tofu made to look and taste like a duck... tasted more like tea-soaked tofu, some mushroom dumplings and a spicy peanut/tofu dish. I had some watermelon juice which was very refreshing.

Away from the restaurants, the temple was very nice. We saw more munks here than at the lama temple... many of them walking with people talking about the meaning of life or maybe the World Cup.. I'm not sure.

Tanny bought... no not a panda purse.... a cool wooden bell which we believe was carved by the lama himself. What a steal at 18 RMB (about $2).

On the way back we found the bus and took it back to the hotel without incident. I can't remember what we had planned for the night but we fell asleep before supper and didn't awake until the next morning. Did I mention how hot it is? It just saps your strength.

Actually, that brings me to another general observation. Chinese people like to sleep. I can't believe how many people I see asleep at their jobs. Mostly the street vendors, but also ticket agents, etc. I can't blame them in this heat. Now I know where Tanny gets her sleepiness.

Oh - another observation I'd like to share... really more of a rumour-buster. I am not a giant among the Chinese. More like average height. What happened! I was promised a world of short people when I was in elementary school. Oh well...

Sichuan opera

I forgot to mention this in my last posting. The night we arrived in Chengdu we decided to see a Sichuan opera performance. It was fantastic!! A little bit of opera/drama, some classical Chinese music, a bit of magic and acrobatics too. A lot like a variety show. We were both pretty sleepy and started to nod off a little during one of the musical pieces, but woke up again for the showcase "Blowing fire and changing faces" performance. There were five or six performers dressed in Chinese costum and wearing painted masks. Two of them blew fire and the rest "changed faces"; they danced around the stage and changed their masks in a split second. I'm not sure how it works, but it looked like the masks might be fabric... maybe the rolled up under their wigs?? I'm really not sure but it was amazing the see. Oh, and there was also a marionette that blew fire and changed faces! Crazy. One other piece that I found interesting was a guy who specialised in shadow puppets. Very worth the "late" night.

Oh - once again, our official tour ride to the show was a guy in a minivan that drove like a maniac.

Big big buddha

After our bus misadventures, Tanny and I decided to stick to sites along the subway line for our last morning in Beijing. But first we went back to our local breakfast spot for the best minced pork buns we've ever tasted - ever! Of course Tanny had another bowl of warm soy milk and we had some more fried dough, but the pork buns were the highlight.

We got up early and made our way to the Lama Temple. It was only two subway stops away from our hotel and very easy to find. We actually got there before it opened and did a little food shopping. Tanny broke the rules and picked her own peaches from the bin.... the peach man wasn't too happy about that, but Tanny didn't really know what he was saying.

The temple was an interesting place. Far different than the Forbidden City, although it was also in a state of update and repair. When we first got there we were with a bunch of people there to worship and place their incence sticks in front of one or more temples or icons. It was a little weird snapping pictures around people that were praying. I'm assuming the monks all did they're praying before the gates opened to us papparazti.

The highlight of our trip to the temple was an 18 m high Buddha statue carved from a single white sandalwood tree. Fantastic! Unfortunately we couldn't photograph it.

That afternoon we left Beijing for Chengdu. We got to the airport early so we decided to buy our plane tickets from Chengdu to Guilin while we were there. Buying tickets for the flight was remniscent of getting the bus to the Great Wall. We knew there was a flight in the afternoon and started at the Air China counter. They only had a flight in the morning and told us to try another airline "over there" for the afternoon flight. So we tried the next ticket counter: Sichuan Air. They had an evening flight but no afternoon flight. Then we tried China Southern and struck gold!

I'll admit I was a little more nervous than usual flying within China. It probably didn't help that the daily English paper paid special attention to any mass transit accident nearby. Sure they were all in Russia, but every little bump of turbulence was a little worrying.

When we got to Chengdu we booked our hotel and "cab ride" to the hotel via the Chinese International Travel Service (a government agency). We negotiated a lower rate for the ride to the hotel and ended up getting a ride with another passenger in what was probably the travel agent's buddy's car. Pretty funny.

The car ride into town was the first of our maniac driving lessons. No one gets mad there, but they just play chicken with the pedestrians, bikes, mopeds and other cars. Lanes don't mean too much... just honk and go! It's amazing that we've only seen one fender-bender.

Chengdu didn't immediately impress me. It was very busy and pretty polluted (air). I'm assuming the insane humidity traps the air pollution making it worse. Our hotel room was also a little sketchy, but once it cooled down it seemed a lot better.

Tomorrow - pandas!

New baby!

No, Tanny and I didn't sneak off to China to have a baby, nor did we adopt one, my sister Erica just gave birth to a healthy baby girl: Moxie Richmond Hooper.


Congratulations!!

The Mystery of the Great Wall

As Tanny and I discovered on our third day in Beijing, the greatest mystery of the great wall is how to get there on your own!

We got up around 6:00 (actually Tanny was up at 4:00 due to a very early bedtime) and went out to a local hotspot for breakfast. Tanny managed to order us some fried dough sticks and two bowls of hot soy milk via a combination of pointing hand gestures and broken Mandarin. I know what you're probably thinking and yeah, I wasn't too crazy about a whole bowl of soy milk but it was pretty tasty and made for a satisfying breakfast. The fried dough sticks were great!

We knew that the cheapest (and "easiest") way to get to the Great Wall was to take bus #919 from a spot located about 500 m from a specific subway station. Getting to the subway station was no problem and we even located the spot with a whole bunch of buses pretty easily. It was some sort of hub for many of the city buses. Pretty neat being there in the morning because there were a lot of stalls set up selling newspapers and breakfast on the go. There were also a lot of ladies with Strofoam coolers full of steaming corn on the cob. I had to pass on the corn since I was pretty full still. :-(

Anyway, we walked along the line of buses until we found the 919 bus stop. Our guide book told us there were two: an express with A/C and a regular 919. Tanny found a sign that said 919 Express in Chinese, but curiously it didn't list Badaling (where we were headed) as one of the stops. When the bus arrived Tanny asked the driver if he went to Badaling and he said no, pointed down the street behind him and said a lot of things we didn't understand. So, we walked in the direction he mentioned and found a non-express 919 stop. When we asked on of the people waiting he didn't think any buses here went to Badaling. Another express pulled up in the meantime so we asked them about Badaling. Same response .. go back. So we kept walking. We found five bus stops for the 919 and none went where we wanted. So we ketp looking. Eventually we ended up an ancient gate, to the north of which was a sign with a huge picture of the Great Wall and the words "Badaling" on it. Plus the ticket agent was shouting "Badaling, Badaling!". Bus number? 919!

Thankfully the bus was an express. The scenery en route was spectacular. Very moutainous. Along the way we saw many stretches of the Great Wall following the ridges along the moutains. I could see why it was a good defense and deterrant and alos why it took so long to build.

The bus eventually stopped a pretty non-descript parking lot and about half the bus got off. We were a little distracted by a kid who puked as soon as he got off and then got confused as to whether or not this was the right stop. No one said Badaling and there weren't any signs for the Great Wall. We started to follow a couple with a camera bag off the bus, but they turned around and sat down. So did we. The bus left the stop and was about 10 km away before we decided we should really have gotten off. I asked the ticket agent "Great Wall?" and she looked horrified! She waved frantically at me and managed to flag down a passing bus, ran after it and screamed at the other bus' confused ticket agent to wait and let us on. We got on the second bus and got off at the first stop. Yes, it was the right stop and no, Badaling is not the last stop of the Badaling #919 bus.

From the bus stop it was about 500 m to the entry of the Great Wall. Along the way we walked past wall to wall gift stalls and restaurants. The entrance was teeming with tourists (90% of whom were Chinese) but it only took us about 10 minutes to get tickets. There are two ways you can go, South and North. We took the South way since it was less crowded. It turns out that it's the steeper section, but having less of a crowd was well worth the steep climb. We walked along the wall for about an hour, taking pictures along the way. It's just as I imagined it. I think most of it has been restored to some degree and at one point the wall is blocked off and you can see crews working to rebuild the next section.

At every shaded portion of the wall there are people selling souvenirs. We relented at the very end of the walk when we met a very tenacious vendor who followed us for about 10 minutes and kept lowering his prices. We bought a picture book and postcards and thought we got a good deal (50 RMB instead of 150) but a Chinese tourist that he approached after us got the same stuff for 30 RMB! Oh well.

And apparently I look like the kind of guy who wants to buy a "Pee pee boy" -- a little statue into whose head you pour some water and well... you can imagine where that goes. Every vendor wanted me to buy one.

We ate lunch in a small restaurant in Badaling. This place definitely had tourists in mind since it prices were about 10 x what we paid in our hutong area in Beijing. Still, the food was good and we had beef chow mein and dumplings.

We got back to Biejing without incident and decided to go to the Summer Palace. It seemed easy to get to ... again take a bus from a specific subway stop ... but when we got to the spot where the bus should be, we saw no buses - anywhere. Since it was hot, sticky and very humid we decided to forego the Summer Palace and had a siesta instead.

Originally we had planned to see a Beijing opera that evening, but Tanny was still quite tired and wasn't sure she could stay awake until the end so we went back to the street of food stalls and had skewers of spicy mystery meat (chicken , I think), some pineapple on a stick and BBQ'd corn. The street was packed with people, locals and tourists alike and had a bit of a fair atmosphere. So far (two days later) there have been no ill effects of the street meat!

After the street market we went to our first Chinese mall which was very upscale and modern. We spent more money on some frozen fruit shakes and a big cream puff at the mall than we had spent on food the previous three days.

Observations on China so far

I missed a bunch of little observations, so I'll interrupt my journal to write a few of them down:

The Beijing subway
I think I mentioned that the Beijing subway is pretty easy to navigate, but I failed to mention how absolutely jam-packed it is, especially during rush hour. During our first rush hour experience we saw a guy determined to get on even though he only had the tips of his fingers and toes inside the car. The security guard tried to pull him off but he wouldn't budge and started screaming until the guard pushed him into the car leaning into him with all his weight. Tanny and I waited for the next train.

Also, I forgot to mention that there is a range of trains on the subway line. On one car the lights kept dimming with a ver sci-fi ZZzzzzt sound. They eventually went out for about 30 seconds. Luckily there were sufficient emergency lights to keep everyone calm. Well, I'm sure all the regulars would have been calm regardless... just us tourist who were wedged into the crowd who mightn't have liked pitch darkness.

Pekinese Dogs
Almost every pet dog we saw in Beijing was a Pekinese! I guess that makes sense since Beijing is Peking.

Energy Efficiency
Contrary to what I expected, people are very energy conscious here. Every light in the hotels and restaurants I've seen has been compact flourescent or just plain flourescent. In Chengdu there are a lot of scooters on the streets - all of which are electric. Even some of the conventional bicycles are power-assisted. I'm assuming your peddlling charges a battery which then keeps you going for a while.

Litter
In Beijing and Chengdu I haven't seen much litter. In fact you continually see people (City employees) sweeping the streets and sidewalks and picking up litter.

Kid fashion
Every "baby" we see wears bum-less pants. Cheeks to the breeze. Not exactly sure why this is better then diapers. Erica - should we pick some up for the new baby?

(No Longer) Forbidden City

After a nice long sleep Tanny and I are now about half on this time zone. 6 hours ahead of Toronto time and 6 hours behind Beijing.

We managed to get up really early in anticipation of our first full day in Beijing, but it turned out to be too early to get breakfast at the restaurant in our hotel which didn't start until 7:00. Breakfast was acutally quite good. It's a buffet mix of Western and Chinese food with things like Chinese saugage (aka weiners), omellette bar, noodles, fried rice, watermellon, pineapple, etc. We ate for at least an hour before heading our to the subway.

We made it to Tienammen square without any problems. I was initially disappointed in that it seemed pretty small. Only later I found out that it was twice as large as what I saw when we first entered the square. It's divided by Mao's mauseleum (which is unfortunately closed on Mondays). The Square was very busy and full of many tourists, Chinese and foreigners alike. At one end of the Square is the Gate of Heavenly Peace - the entrance to the Forbidden City. It's on this gate that the huge portrait of Chairman Mao hangs. The Forbidden City was the living quarters of the Chinese Emperors in the Ming and Qing Dynasties for about 500 years. Inside there are many gates and halls with inspiring names like the Hall of Supreme Harmony and Palace of Heavenly Purity. We rented an audio guide which was pretty cool because it seemed to have a GPS or other proximity sensor and knew when you were close to each site and began playing the appropriate recording.

Unfortunately, many of the buildings were covered in scaffolding. I'm assuming they're preparing the site for the Olympic tourists in 2008. We saw enough buildings to get a feel for their majesty and spent nearly six hours there.

Inside the Imperial Gardens in the Forbidden city was numerous Cypress trees which look like giant bansai trees. There were also some trees that had green/gray/red mottled bark. There are some here at the hotel and I have no idea what kind of tree they are. Very unusual.

After the Forbidden City we tried to find the tourist information kiosk. We thought it was straight forward but walked down a progressively darker and sketchier road first, then retraced our steps and walked down the correct road and thought we turned on to the correct street but never did find the information kiosk.

We did find a very good restaurant and ate a super lunch of peanut chicken, fried rice and veggies. Poor Tanny was again faced with a waitress who seemed as baffled with Tanny's incomprehension as Tanny was baffled by her Mandarin. We ended up getting the English menu.

Once we ate we went out in search of the subway and found a major commericial center. The street was blocked to cars and turned into a pedestrian mall with huge stores on both sides. Not the communist ideal I expected! We also stumbled onto a side street that was a food market. Tanny was disappointed we had already eaten, but I was rather glad we ate where we did. The stalls at the start of the market had skewers of fruit and fresh noodles. A little further in however were skeweres of seahorses, star fish and scorpians!!! And the scorpians were still alive... squirming on their skewers! We got some pictures but didn't taste them.

We had planned to go to the Summer Palace but were both pretty tired and went back to the hotel for a nap. I watched the end of the original "Mr. Deeds" and all of "Taking Lives" before falling asleep around 7:30 pm. Tanny was out at 5:00.

A long, long flight

Well, we managed to get packed for our trip and settled down for our pre-trip slumber at about 2:30 am. Not too excited to set my alarm for 5:30.

Coby is getting along better with Lina's cats: Nobu and Ludo. She has a very distinct "hello" for them... some might call it a hiss, but they seem to be getting along.

The flight to Beijing is 13 hours, but it's effectively about 25 hours since we left Toronto at 9:45 and arrived in Beijing at 11:10 am the next day. We both managed to sleep a bit on the flight and watched "Failure To Launch" and the end of "Match Point" which we had already seen.

The food was yummy, but we've realised that sitting at the second-last row is tough when the plane is so huge (47 rows x 8 people in economy). It takes forever for the food to arrive!

The Beijing airport is like most modern airports. Of course I was surrounded in a flurry Chinese speech but it was really no different than going to Dim Sum restaurants in Markham. Got through customs with no problem which is good since my Chinese VISA reports my name as "Joshua Ricmmond". Must be something about travelling with Tanny. When we went to Iceland my travel documents were always messed up, ranging from "Jobhua Richmond" to "Joshua Ting".

We managed to make it onto the public transit bus and then onto the subway with no problems. It was hot and hazy. A curtain of fog as far as you could see. The subway system here is very well organised. There are three lines: 1, 2 and .... 13. #2 is a loop and #1 goes East-West through the loop. Sort of like in Toronto if the Sheppard line went from Finch W to Finch.

Anyway, we got off the subway and there were some convenient signs and a map showing the location of our hotel. Easy. Just head South three blocks and turn right. Or was it five blocks? We made it two blocks and completely forgot where to turn. After heading down a sketchy looking alley for a while we decided to head back and try the next street which proved correct.

We're not staying in a very touristy area which is great. We're in what's called a hutong. Basically an area built around a lot of narrow alleys and laneways. People have their laundry hanging out in the street, you can see and smell big pigeon coups in other people's "yards", there are numerous food stalls along the street. Lots of bike traffic here, though not the huge jam of bikes I saw pictures of when I was a kid. Still, it's a major mode of transportation. There are delivery bikes with wagons attached, people riding on pannier racks, bikes pulling rickshaws and all without a single helmet. Bikes, cars and pedestrians jostle with one another on the streets. There may be pedestrian crosswalk markings, but there are no lights. You just weave in and out of cars and bikes and hope you don't get hit. Cars just honk at you and the bikes and the other cars. In the hutong alleys there is only enough room for one car. Again, it's up to the pedestrians to stay out of their way.

Our hotel is very touristy but not very full. It's an old estate of some government official and has a beautiful courtyard garden. We've seen a few Chinese tourists here but it's mostly non-Chinese. Our room is very nice and decorated like an old room (plus a TV and A/C).

After we dropped off our back packs we set out to see the Drum and Bell towers which are only a few minutes from here. These are towers that used to announce the time to the Beijing people. Normally you get a good view of the hutong but it was still pretty foggy. Unfortunately it was clear to see that much of the hutong is being torn down by sledgehammer and shovel. Probably to make way for more modern buildings.

After walking around the Drum tower and watching their drum show we set out further into Beijing to get some food. We thought we had a plan.. looking for a dumpling restaurant that wasn't too far away but ended up being on the wrong side of the street. We still found a clean-looking restaurant and ate our fill of noodles and pork buns. Poor Tanny gets all the attention from the servers at restaurants since they assume she speaks Mandarin (which she does not). Luckily she can read some Mandarin.

On the way home we saw a huge line up at a Chinese bakery. Tanny bought a huge bag of some pastry and two peanut-shortbread cookies for about $1. The girl at the counter gave me a couple of free samples too. Mmmm..... cookies.....

We had grand plans for the rest of the night but got back to the hotel and fell asleep around 6 pm.

I should be packing...

Instead of packing I'm setting up my blog.
smart. :-)