Daylight Saving's Time, Chinese Style

April 30, 2011

Technically speaking China qualifies for five different time zones, but they only operate under one. Everybody operates on Beijing time. The benefit of state planning, I suppose when you can make everybody run on your clock. I understand that in the Uiger area they do run on two hours difference from Beijing, but I guess I find that out soon enough. All I know is that we’ve come a long way west and nothing’s changed. In Beijing it was beginning to get light at 5 a.m. but here in Xining it’s still dark outside at that time. All areas must adapt to what’s convenient for Beijing. I understand the logic, just not the practicality. It puts an extra burden on everybody not in that Beijing latitude.

Our plan B yesterday was a real mess up. No real fault of anybody, well, not  with the organizers of the tour anyway. We stayed in Linxia as I mentioned, and it was a miserable adjustment. Had to be done we all understand, but the hotel they came up with was clean, but that’s all I can say about it. Beds were rock hard, pillows harder, breakfast atrocious, no hot water and mosquitoes in the rooms. Michael and Thor said they almost knocked themselves out swatting the ‘beasts’ in the night. Fireworks went off at 5 a.m. What’s that all about? Sounded like the “Excitement” the Chinese authorities were worried about.

But after leaving the hotel we did have a nice day, long, but nice. They decided since we couldn’t go to Xiahe that we’d go to a Buddhist grotto area across a large lake flooded by the damming of the Yellow River. We got out early, no objections there from the group, and after  motoring across the lake in speed boats for about 20 minutes, came to the area. We were the first ones there and it was incredibly peaceful. We walked along a narrow passage built just above the water’s edge a lovely pathway with nicely done pillars which made for a very serene stroll. After the cacophony of horns in Linxia the solitude was really what we all needed. A large Buddha had been carved into the cliff face, ala Abu Simbel and several small niches in the stone really set the tone for the walk. It was another stop on the Silk Road. We’re getting into the meat of the area now and it’s difficult to imagine how they did this. It’s tough enough by bus, but by camel taking months and years to do, well, it’s a mind blower. 

Right now we’re dealing with  lot of contrasts. Horribly maintained roads turn into super four lane highways, crumbling villages which make you wonder why people live there, become cities with multiple 30 plus story apartment complexes just down the road, land so pitifully poor in quality suddenly becomes lush, fertile landscapes. 

Everybody is starting to do the old eye-ball roll at lunch and dinner. First of all, it’s way too much food, and secondly it’s way too much Chinese food. It was great for a while, but I think there’s a mini revolt coming. As Saci said: “At home you have Chinese food, what, once a month? Here twice a day, every day.” Nobody’s disagreeing with him. The meal plan is that we have breakfast each day and either lunch or dinner. But Ben arranges the meal not included and it’s turning out to be the same. Carol and I brought Clif Bars, and I think we’re going to pass on the lunches. 

Our plan C city is Xining. Since we couldn’t get to Xiahe and absolutely nobody was going to stay in Linxia for another night, we came here. Tomorrow we’re going to see a different Buddhist monastery from the one scheduled in plan A. To get here we did travel overland. All the intercity travel so far has been overnight trains, but that’s going to change since we only have two more. Traveling overland in daylight really gives one the sense of what this journey would have been like. Because we were not going on scheduled itineraries, things got a little convoluted. We were headed in the right direction when the road was suddenly closed. That began a series of stops asking directions of how to get over the mountain. The local told us to take this road and then turn here and then get back to there.  That worked up to the third direction when the plan fell apart with an impassable road. Back down the mountain to the same village, but this time ask another local, who gave different directions, which again worked fine until there was a fork in the road which was not explained. Stop the bus, go find another driver and get directions from him. It was comical in that we all knew we’d get there eventually and it was almost comforting to know that a local driver didn’t know how to do it. It made us all realize how totally lost we’d be attempting something like this on our own. 

With all the one night stands we’ve had in combination with the trains, laundry is starting to pile up. No time to wash and get it dry before we’re off to the next town. Everybody’s getting that: “my socks are dirty,” look about them. 

Michael and Thor, our flamboyant gay couple, are a constant source of entertainment. They’re so over the top it’s fun to watch them be so totally themselves and not give a damn about anything else. They’re fun, open, helpful and entertaining. They showed pictures today of their children. Eyes opened widely as the photos came out, only to find they were two Afghan hounds who they raised from pups. Stories about the dogs sleeping with them with their heads on the pillow and growling when the “parents” tried to move were hilarious. We  all felt sad for them when they told us the dogs had died. They said that their friends told them they were perfectly matched with the dogs, because when they ran on the beach the four of them all ran alike.

Although I sent out something this afternoon and this is rather short, I’m sending it anyway because internet service is getting spotty and we’re getting into areas where the quality of hotels may not provide the opportunity to send. I’ll continue to write since the whole purpose of these is for my own records, but many of you have indicated you enjoy getting them, so, I’ll send them as time and opportunity allow. We may be heading to the dark side of the moon and not have any communication until we emerge on the flip side. But know that there are lots of things which happen to make us think of you at home and that will continue. As we went across the water today in the boat, I couldn’t help but remember my two friends from school who couldn’t understand why it took them so long to get back from their fishing trip on Pardee Lake. They gunned the engine and it worked hard, but the boat never got up any speed . It was only when they got back to the dock that they realized that they’d forgotten to raise the anchor. 

Life is to enjoy, stay safe and do so.

Carol and Jim

I may never eat chinese food again.

April 29, 2011
Plan B or is it C now?

We had planned to get up this morning and walk down to the park where we saw hundreds of people doing their morning Tai Chi. Thought it might make a nice photo op and also a visual for the brain. However, we looked out our window and it looked incredibly polluted. When we got downstairs we realized that the wind was blowing strongly and had blown in the dust off the steppes. We had an inkling of this yesterday when we saw people with large brooms sweeping dust off ledges and stairways. Little did we know that is normal at the time. The others decided to take a free pass on the walk so I went down by myself. Instead of the crowd, there were eight people exercising. I filmed, but didn’t get too close. I didn’t want to invade their space, and besides they were all wielding swords. Many of the people held their noses to avoid the dust in their nose. Hey, you gotta breathe. If you’re holding your nose then the dust goes into mouth and lungs. I figured that’s why god put all those hairs in your nose to trap all that gunk. She knows what she’s doing. Many others wore masks over their noses and mouths – those surgical masks that  you often see Japanese tourists wearing, but which Americans wouldn’t be caught dead wearing outside the O.R. My favorite was a young woman who painted a cat’s face on hers, complete with mouth, nose and whiskers. 

We were on our way to the small city of Xiahe.  At about 9,000 feet in altitude and a population of just 20,000, we thought it would make a really nice break from the big city life we’ve experienced so far. We were going to visit a very famous Tibetan Buddhist monastery. One of the six greatest Buddhist sites in China.  Xiahe is a Tibetan town and I was really looking forward to it. It was an important stopover place on the Silk Road. Caravans would rest there, gather supplies, wait for the weather to clear and probably dozens of other reasons about which I have no clue.

On the way we climbed out of the valley and into the mountains. The road was bumpy and dusty, which combined with the dust blowing in really made for a nasty ride even inside a nice coach. The hills were devoid of vegetation. The tilted fault blocks were crumbling from the millennia of erosion and small rocks dotted the ground. The hills were steep and gullies of washed out soil went straight down to the bottom. Houses were mud buildings and single level. They may have been brick covered over but I couldn’t see that. It looked very poor and it’s pretty obvious that it’s an area where you only live if they have to do so. Every once in a while you would see a patch of earth which was being cultivated, sometimes on slopes so steep and in soil so poor you wondered how they ever worked the soil much less ever got anything out of them. The little plots were all covered in plastic. No weed is going to suck up water needed for the actual edible plants.  People watered their plants with a tea kettle.  Water goes only to the plant. None is wasted.

 After an hour of this we leveled out on the plateau and the plots got bigger and the soil seemingly more fertile. An actual river wove its way down the plateau and the mud huts changed to actual brick multi-storied structures. We even saw a building of about seven stories. Clusters of houses marked some sort of organizational structure. Minarets appeared and Buddhist stupas as well. Then Ben announced that there was a change of plans. As it was explained, and details are very sketchy, somebody appointed a new living Buddha (Dalai Lama?) and there was great “Excitement” in the Tibetan areas. Because of this “Excitement” we weren’t allowed to go to Xiahe and spend our two nights there. Instead, we detoured to the city of Linxia. A dirty, heavily polluted city of 250,000 which has no redeeming connection to the Silk Road. The only thing we did here was to visit a mosque. So, as I write, plans are fluid, shall we say. They’ve changed several times in the afternoon and I’ll just have to wait. 

This is the real China to my mind. They can gussy up their cities and have fancy shops where smart looking women and businessmen walk the street and flash their fat wallets and drive fancy cars. But here the air literally sucks, the shops look like they’re full of second hand goods, the streams are open sewers and smell like it, and it’s this reality for untold millions of people who really know nothing of the “New China.”  Their lives remain untouched by all the glitz and glamour of Shanghai and Xi’an.

Carol and I walked  around town and took pictures of infants, toddlers, school kids, old women and anybody else who had an interesting face and didn’t object to us filming. The city is 52 % Muslim and so it is colorful. Women wear pink hats that look like a chef’s hat cut in two and they’ve thrown away the bottom. We were greeted by smiles, usually, or disdain, sometimes, depending on the person, but we didn’t intrude on anybody’s space. At one point there were three 50-ish women sitting on steps outside a shop and I looked at them and they gave me a warm smile and pointed to my baseball hat with the Zambian flag on it and the word “Zambia.” I pointed my camera at them and gestured to see if it was okay to film. They smiled in return and so I did. I took off my hat and put it on one of their heads and she just got the biggest smile on her face, and I got a digital with Carol’s camera that I could show to her. Carol sat in the middle of them and more photos were taken. Another group of women stopped for photos and one of them grabbed Carol’s arm and pulled her into the photo.

There was an animated game of Chinese Chess with fat coaster-sized playing pieces, each painted with Konji symbols playing on a board that looked nothing like a chess board, but that’s what Ben told us it was. We filmed their game for a while, and these guys were “Excited” in the sense of the word as we know it. These moments made for a pleasant afternoon despite sucking all kinds of crap into our lungs that I don’t even want to think about. It really makes you wonder about people and their lives. How can they live with this day in and day out. Most don’t have options for anything else I’m sure but it would be tough, no matter what your cultural bias might be.

The bottom line on our change of plans is that what the Chinese call “Excitement,” we would call civil unrest, and either they don’t want us to see it or don’t want us to see their repression of it, or to come away with any impression of the “Semi Autonomous Regions” that doesn’t fit their P.R. output.`        

      

More when I understand what the whole deal is about

Carol and Jim

Downsizing, Chinese Style

April 28, 2011

We’ve gone from Beijing with 13 million to Xi’an with 7 million and we’re now in Lanzhou with 3 million people. Our overnight train ride was, as forewarned, not as nice as our first one. The compartment was the same. The distance between the two lower beds is the width of my two hands with fingers extended and with the four of us jostling backpacks it’s quite crowded. Luckily, we’re with Lise and Saci who are easy to deal with. Others might be more problematic, but with Saci making every little inconvenience something to laugh about, it defuses any tension which might develop. Since we left at 10:30 p.m. we were all ready for bed and conversation ended quickly. The train lurched its way during our eight hour ride and we all had a night we got through rather than slept through.

After strolling the streets of Xi’an for the last three days and being so impressed with the cosmopolitan atmosphere of it, we were brought back to reality at the train station. Xi’an’s main shopping area where we were ensconced was very upscale, but at the train station it was the real China. Just as in Beijing there were thousands of people waiting to go somewhere. The loudspeaker blared some kind of garbled message which seemed totally incomprehensible, even if it had been in English. Gone were the fancy dresses and spike heels. Gone were the businessmen in expensive clothes. Here were the kind of people who make up the bulk of the 1.3 billion inhabitants of this huge country. Fancy suitcases were replaced by plastic feed bag type containers which carried the traveling goods of the people. The “People” travel by train, the Prada types travel in their own cars, avoiding the crush of the masses. At the train station they can’t honk their horns demanding that people get out of their way. They can’t go to upscale restaurants where there is no waiting and no crowded tables jammed in together where some groups of people shout at each other while they smoke through the meals. Traveling by train brings the real China into play.

We were lucky to get into our hotel rooms here in Lanzhou early. After breakfast we came to the JJ Sun Hotel which is the nicest we’ve stayed  in so far. They’ve all been fine, this is just a step up. Although the beds are so-called twins, they seem double in size. Western-style mattresses replace the Chinese-style and will make for a good night’s sleep. In fact, Carol already had a nap since we were given the morning to get cleaned up following the train trip. On the last train ride, Saci stood outside our compartment and as members of the group came by, he asked : “how did you sleep? I’m taking a poll.” It was pretty evenly matched between good and bad, but he didn’t bother to ask this morning. Everybody seemed to have that: “Don’t ask, don’t tell” look on their face. I saw him in the hallway outside of the hotel rooms and he said Lise was napping just as Carol was. In addition to the great beds, I have dsl in the room so I can write and check hockey scores, and weather and whatever I want just from the desk. I’m such a geek. Lise can only access wi-fi so I told her she  could borrow my computer. She’s as bad as I am. The shower head is about 7 feet high and I can just stand below it and have the water cascade down on my tired body.Thor is even taller than I am, and he said he luxuriated in it.  Life is good, but we only have one night here. We’d all like another night here in this hotel. With another train ride tomorrow night, it will make three straight nights of moving. Has to be done, China is huge as we all know, but still not a happy thought.

Lanzhou is one of the most polluted cities in China, and from our room on the 15^th floor, it’s obvious. Saci wanted to know why he wasn’t on the 23^rd , or top floor, since, as he always says: “I paid for it.” But thankfully we’re not because, if we were, we probably couldn’t see through the gunk. We look down from our 15^th floor at some smoke stacks right below us. Not the best view. Petrochemical industries and coal burning factories have turned the city into a real pollution mess. They tell us they’ve cleaned up their act, but it’s not obvious. 

The people have changed ethnically. Gone are the more rounded facial structures of the east. The people here have a more angular face, and the complexion has taken on a darker-ruddier look.  The wind blown steppes with the sun bearing down in the summer and the bitterly cold winters give the faces a weathered, almost leathery texture. It’s obviously an area where people are closer to the land as opposed to spending their day in the comfort of offices. The stereotypical Asian features have moderated over the centuries and we’re definitely approaching Central Asia. The differences are more nuances, and because the government has encouraged the Han majority to move into the area with incentives, it is not a homogeneous look, but a varied one and you see a wide variety of looks. But the eyes – oh, how they shine and twinkle when they smile. It gives the face an entirely different look. The smile seems to cover their entire face and the eyes brighten with a warmth and acceptance that I believe is so typical of Central Asia. Our time in Mongolia showed us that.

The city is a long ribbon of buildings with mountains running along both sides of the valley carved out over the millennia  by the Yellow River which at over 3000 miles long is China’s second longest. Where they can’t build out, they build up. High-rise buildings in excess of 30 stories dot the landscape with many more going up. The Chinese build high. We saw the same thing in Xi’an even where they could build out. The city has such a different feel to it. Giorgio has definitely left town and taken the rest of his lot with him because Prada this is not. It’s a multi-cultural city where minarets dot the skyline between the skyscrapers. Calls to prayer are offset by the ringing of Buddhist bells at their temples. Muslim girls wear their colorful headscarves and the men wear the white cap on the top of their head,  while the Han majority students walk down the street in their school uniforms. There are many ethnic minorities in the city as well, and we really feel as if we’ve left the touristy stuff behind and we’re on the road.

We walk down the street and people look at us as if they’ve never seen Caucasians before. Some just stare, but we are greeted by a look that invites a greeting on our part, and it is always returned with a smile and a “Knee-how” from them. Kids come up on the street and want to know where we’re from, and while Carol and I were at a park this morning, a man held up his camera as a way of asking if he could take a photo. We said yes, and that picture was followed by some of his group deciding they wanted to be in the photo, which was followed by others wanting in the picture as well. Then he wanted a photo with him in it, so he gave his camera to someone and then others decided they wanted in it as well and the process started all over again. It was like family photo day at the park and everybody took part. When it was all over, they huddled in a large group and looked at the digital pics complete with oohs and ahs.

We got into an elevator at the hotel and there was a knot of people already there. A woman of about 20 or so smiled and I greeted her. She got the biggest smile on her face. Another person made extra room for us and I said “Shay-shay” or thank you and they again got the biggest kick out of it. I explained that was it. That was all I knew along with a “You’re welcome.”  Again, she wanted to know where we were from and all this in the course of the elevator going from the 15^th floor to the 4^th where they got off. As she left the elevator she began to giggle and literally bunny-hopped her way out of the elevator in pure delight.

Of course, all this is equalized by the toddler who was walking with his father and looked up at me, got a horrified look on his face and burst out in a frightened bawling all the time pulling on his dad’s arm to get him outta there. He was scared stiff. And there was the school girl who I inadvertently bumped into and she recoiled as if I had leprosy. We’ve had two meals here and haven’t seen another westerner. We know it’s going to get even more remote and isolated from the tourist trade as we head further west tomorrow. But we’ve left all the tourist traps behind. No more people yelling “Special price” at us as we walk down the streets. No more tee shirt shops with Mao in the requisite green jacket he always wore and the hat with the red star on it, nor the shirts right beside them which are exactly the same with the exception that it’s Obama’s face on it. I hope the Donald Trumps and Sara Palins and  the rest of the right wing don’t see that one. They’ll alter their birth certificate diatribes to the conspiratorial theory that he’s really a Communist Chinese spy about to sell out the country. 

We went for a walk in the afternoon and decided to check out an area we could see from our perch on the 15^th floor. There were lots of white hats bobbing and weaving below us and we were curious. It looked like a large group of Muslims and close to the hotel. When we got to the cross street, we discovered it was roped off from traffic entering and the street was filled with tour buses of every size and comfort level. Walking along the side streets were also filled. People had put carpets down on the pavement like so many teenie rock fans staking out their spot before a big concert. Thousands upon thousands of people milled around, walked up and down counting their prayer beads, sat on the street and watched the whole scene, which included the group of four westerners who starkly stood out in the crowd. Vendors roasted corn on the cob, shish kabobs sizzled on hot charcoals, and the air was filled with pungent herbs and spices. We were keenly watched by all - never with any hostility, and usually with simple curiosity. However many of those faces still shone with a hint of positive feedback and when we smiled and said hello, they burst into smiles which would warm even the coldest of hearts. It turns out that a famous Imam is buried here and this is an annual pilgrimage which takes place as people for all over come in a sort of mini hadj.

The food is changing as well and that’s a good thing. The meals have been good and filling (too filling) and have been traditional dishes. We usually have 6-7 different plates since we eat family style, sometimes at two tables of 7 each, sometimes at a large table with all of us together, when the number of dishes is increased accordingly. Since we’ve left the main Han area and entered Muslim territory, the meals reflect that.  However, Peter, the photographer, was the first to bail and had a steak in his room from room service. We gave him the benefit of the doubt and said that he wanted a break from the food rather than a break from us.

The air is staggeringly filthy this morning. Can’t see ¼ of a mile from our room. Time to get out of Dodge.

The Chinese Wear Prada

April 27, 2011

And Louis Vuitton and Armani and Gucci and almost any other high end designer you can think of, and they wear a lot more of it here in Xi’an than they did in Beijing. Whether it’s because this is the place where western contact began those many centuries ago I know not, but they are certainly more stylish here, and there is a much more “western” feel to the city. Gone is the panty hose/leotard-short skirt/dress look and it has been replaced by stylish dresses and bare legs. Women look like they’re all headed to some party with their best dresses on. Spike heels are far more prevalent. While the women are more stylish, the men are more casual. Jeans and slacks have replaced the suits. At the same time we see far less “country” dress than we did in Beijing. The massive crowds coming in from the provinces to see Mao’s tomb and the forbidden city are gone and Xi’an feels much more like a city where people live and work. Certainly the climate must play into the mix. We’re running about 20 degrees warmer here than we were in the more northern capital. The air quality sucks, but other than that, it’s a far more interesting and attractive city than Beijing.

We went up the bell tower yesterday and watched traffic from above. Cars jostled with buses coming from different directions for their space. Ownership of a given space seems to belong to those strong enough to assert their will. The same philosophy seems to be the de facto rule for standing in lines at the supermarket, hotel lobbies, waiting for elevators,  or where ever groups congregate. If you get your space you had better be ready to defend it because you will be tested. People will just  walk up and stand in front of you. If I was home and somebody did that it would really piss me off, but again I really try hard not to invoke those social conventions that operate where I live. I try to adapt to the social conventions where I’m visiting. It’s just too easy to say: “It’s rude” or “it’s wrong.” I don’t understand why things are that way. Maybe it’s just the overall crush of so any people, but I don’t have to understand. It’s not their job to adjust to my sensibilities,  it’s my job to adjust to their way of doing things. To be sure, the learning curve can be a little frustrating, but travel is all about adapting and learning. That’s why I love seeing so many different places. It causes me to get out of my little comfort zone and helps me understand that in this world there are so many different ways that people have made life work for them. Not right, not wrong. Not good, not bad. Just different. 

The most intriguing part of watching the traffic from the bell tower was seeing how people on bicycles, and motorized versions of the same navigate those multiple lanes of merging traffic. Coming down a given street of three lanes of traffic, they have to stick to the right or get run down by the zig-zagging and speeding cars. Then at the traffic circle around the bell tower, they’ve got to get across those lanes and into the merging traffic coming at them laterally from that 90 degree angle. Not only that, but they’ve got to get across those lanes into the right lane to avoid the zig-zagging and speeding cars coming at them from the different directions. There is no helmet law here, or maybe it’s just not enforced, like the smoking law. (My favorite situation was the man sitting in a chair with the “No smoking” sign just above his head as he puffed away.) and to see whole families, that would be mom, dad and the one child, on a motor scooter dodging traffic is harrowing even for the observer.

Then to see them going the wrong way down an equally busy street made us all just watch and say to each other, “Did you see that?” What with all the dresses and skirts, women ride side-saddle on the motor scooters and that seems particularly imbalanced. But again, it’s all a matter of what works for a given culture. To be fair, we didn’t see any accidents. Everybody understands the rules and as much as everybody is trying to protect their little turf of traffic space from cars, trucks, buses, etc. taking that away from them, when it happens people just let it happen without killing or maiming each other. Although we thought there would be multiple accidents, at the last second the motor scooter stopped just short of being run over, or the car jammed on their brakes when they realized that their spot had been co-opted.

We went to Pizza hut for lunch yesterday. The four Norte Americanos decided we wanted to see what all this buzz about how Pizzza Hut in China was different from home was about. Well, it’s still Pizza Hut, or so we think, since none of us have been to one at home. But, in all honesty, it tasted good.  We all enjoy our dinners, but two meals a day of rice, peppery lamb, broccoli chicken, spicy beef, and the other individual dishes which are technically different but, in the end, are all beginning to taste the same. We’re hoping that as we get into the ethnic areas of the west, we’ll find the cuisine to be different. Stopped by the Baskim Robbins for some ice cream after dinner which tasted good.

Our morning was spent riding a tandem around the 9 mile city wall. Looking down upon the city from 40 feet or so gives a unique view to the entire inner city. It took us two hours to circumnavigate counting stops to rest sore butts and tired quads, neither more important than the other. Oh, yeah, we also took some photos just to give some justification for our stops. Along the way some nice music wafted from speakers strategically placed at intervals which set the tone very nicely. Some of the music can be very jarring, but this was all instrumental and pleasantly soft. Certain stops gave us a view of the town below that the city fathers would prefer you didn’t see, dirt courtyards and buildings  which housed people who don’t shop at the stores mentioned at the top. The wall is kept really clean with waste cans along the way disguised as ancient bells. Were it not for the word “Push” written you’d think they were heavy iron bells. At times we heard roosters crowing from rooftops, while at others we saw beautiful gardens located in courtyards between the houses at the second story level. The paving was bumpy and the tandems ancient, but we all managed to make it around. Along the way we were greeted by smiling faces. We called hello, pronounced knee-how, and were rewarded by laughter and pleasantries. Vistas of high rise living quarters all packed together like so many lego blocks gave us wonder about how miserable it would be to live in such dense living space, and at the same time to think it’s pretty cool that people have really decent housing.  We could see the large number of parks which has led Xi’an to be called the Green City. People were doing Tai Chi below us adding to the peacefulness and calm. 

We then went to the  Muslim quarter to see the grand mosque which is built in the Chinese style. If you didn’t know it was a mosque you’d think it was just another complex of Chinese buildings. The name for the Muslims is the “Hui” people. Translated it means, “go back home.”  They came with the silk trade and stayed adding a further cosmopolitan flavor to this already diverse city which we have thoroughly enjoyed. Lunch was a Muslim meal, a lamb stew in a bowl into which we had already broken up pieces of a bread that resembled a large English muffin which had gone hard. Ben, our guide, kept telling me I had to make my pieces smaller, the size of peas. I told him the peas in my garden grew really big. The meal made an excellent change from the usual fare. The 10 of us who partook were happy we’d chosen to eat here, and made us look forward to the changes ahead.

We leave tonight on the overnight train to Langzau. It departs with Chinese Railway efficiency at 10:30 and arrives at 6 a.m. or so tomorrow so it will be a shorter ride. We’ll leave behind us crowds of tourists (hopefully) and the must see things on tour company itineraries. We’ll replace them with the more remote western areas. We have three more overnight trains including tonight. Ben tells us that the train here to Xi’an was the best we’ll have and that they will get progressively worse as we go further west. The overnights require a little more organization. We have to have our suitcases down by 8 in the morning. We can keep our rooms until noon, but at that time we have to keep with us whatever we need for the day and for the train ride. We don’t have access to our suitcases until we reach the hotel the following day. In the case of tomorrow, arriving so early in the morning will require a little more organization still.

For whatever reason, my beard seems to generate a lot of conversation which is an unending source of amusement to Saci. He’ll poke me and say: “they’re talking about your beard,” and laugh. People pull at their chins while talking to their friends, all the time giving furtive looks in my direction. Maybe it’s the whiteness of the thing. Who knows. Saci’s sense of humor continues to engage the group and everybody loves him. When Minh was off from the group yesterday and we were getting ready to leave, Saci announced that Minh was looking for a new wife. He says everything with such good spirit that nobody gets upset. Unlike the other gringo who has offended two of the women. I asked Fran who is our age and who was born in Austria if she was alive during the Anschluss (sp) she got offended because I made her seem older. She was born during the war, and I was just referring to the joining of  Germany and Austria. Megan got upset with me when I asked her if anyone had ever told her her voice was distinctive and sounded like Julia Child. This was Carol’s description, not mine, but she has the tact not to say anything, whereas I just come out with it. Oh, well, Carol still loves me :-)

We’re trashed after our bike ride. Our calves have recovered from the great wall climb, now we have to regain our quads and knees which were turned to jelly pushing the old rickety bike around the wall. All part of the grand adventure. Each day has something special to it and with the group we have, we obviously made the right choice in opting for this trip on this date. Lise, Nellie and I are the geeks who are wondering/concerned about what internet connections we have ahead of us. Oh, well. That too is part of the adventure.

Hope to talk to you soon,

Carol and Jim

Let the Trip Begin

Apr 25, 2011

I’ll probably never understand why some places are so blah to me. This probably sounds very callous sitting in a fancy hotel in china, but the reality is that it always seems to happen to me. Last year it was Granada, and this year it was Beijing. I never had any real interest in going there. I went because that’s where all the  trips start, and because, unlike me, Carol definitely was looking forward to it. I just found it to be a sterile, cold city in spite of the things I mentioned in my last letter. Today, however, was completely different. We got here following the overnight train trip, and as we departed the Station, Saci and I just looked at each other and said: “This is cool.” It just felt totally different, and more about that in a moment.

We spent our last day in Beijing nursing our sore calf muscles from our wall climb. Found out everybody was suffering. Saci and Lise climbed to the very top while Carol and I looked and said: “Looks like what we’ve aleady done and came on back down. Typically, Saci said that he went to the top because he paid for it and he’s was going to do it. “Now,” he said, “I’m paying for it all over again.” We walked around the zoo but that was a total waste of time and we left after a couple of hours. It’s hard for us to see animals in a zoo after seeing them in the wilds of Africa. At the Beijing zoo they’re all behind glass in small enclosures where the animals pace back and forth. The glass is totally smudged from all the grubby little hands smearing it. Speaking of grubby little hands, it was a Sunday so the zoo was full of families, which was the good news and the bad news. We sat and watched mom, dad, and their one child go from place to place and that was interesting, but it was an absolutely chaotic mess where you had to fight your way to the glass only to find the dirty glass.

Leaving Beijing on the night train was an adventure. We got to the station for our 8 pm train and it was unlike any train station I’ve ever seen. It is the largest station in Asia and serves an average of 175,000 passengers a day. It’s just massive in size with an entryway main aisle as large as a football field and multiple waiting rooms as large as a baseball infield, each of them filled with hundreds of people waiting for trains. When we walked to the train, there were 9 different platforms each with tracks on either side. People scurried to trains heading where I know not, but it was certainly the largest and busiest station I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world, and it’s just one of five major stations in Beijing. 

 There were four of us to a cabin and Saci said that we should share a compartment. I was happy he suggested it, because it was my choice as well.  The group mixes very well and it is probably the most congenial group we’ve been on, but Saci and I seem to have a special connection. He has a great sense of humor and finds things to laugh at no  matter the situation.  Our compartment was tiny, with the requisite two upper bunks and two lower. I was the last in the room, so he said there was no room and me I’d have to make other arrangements. Lise is very congenial and always finds the sunny side of life, as Mother Maybelle Carter would sing. I  can’t give you the link for that since I can’t access Youtube. The 1200 km ride took 12 hours and was remarkable smooth. The beds were hard and narrow but we managed. About 5 in the morning I was awake and tired of lying on the hard bed, so I sat up. Saci awoke shortly after that and did the same on his side of the narrow aisle between the two bunks. So here were two grown men sitting in the dark across from each other just a couple of feet apart, neither one talking so that we wouldn’t disturb the wives in the upper bunks (their choice) and it just seemed so bizarre as we both sat there and laughed as quietly as possible at the ridiculousness of it all. 

There’s no food on the train so we had each brought snacks. I had some lemon bars which were so dry that Minh (a dentist) could use them as a sponge to absorb all liquid in a patient’s mouth as he worked. Saci had some Oreos and something else we couldn’t identify. The ladies woke up and we talked about our various muscles which didn’t get restored over night, and the newly sore ones which now needed attention.  We have three more overnights and we’re hopeful we’ll get used to it. But overall, the ride was very smooth. There was some confusion since the train started out in one direction and somewhere during the night switched  and we headed the opposite way. 

Arriving in Xi’an, which means “West people,” just had an immediately pleasant effect on my spirits, the brown pall in the air notwithstanding. Saci asked me if I had seen the moon, and we finally realized it was the sun trying to work its way through the gunk. Certainly it is smaller than Beijing, but at 7 million,  we’re still not talking Podunk city. The weather is much better. In Beijing it was like Washington and we went back and forth being cold and warm depending upon the moment. Did we dress for warmth and then have to carry our jackets around with us as we explored the city, or did we minimize the clothing and then get cold when the wind blew and it rained or hailed on us, which it did. We got off the train at 8 a.m. and it was 75 degrees and hit 80 in the afternoon so that problem was solved. Lots of trees and green areas as we bused to our hotel. Parks seemed to appear on all sides, and everything seemed to be ramped down a considerable notch. People on the street seemed to dress smartly and it was obvious that Xi’an certainly has its share of the new capitalism or “planned market economy” as the authorities euphemistically refer to it. 

We did the requisite tourist stop here which is the terra cotta warrior pit. You can see images at:

http://www.google.com.hk/search?q=terra+cotta+warriors&hl=zh-CN&newwindow=1&safe=strict&client=firefox-a&hs=brU&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Q_G1Ta7ZBpDCvQO37-GFBw&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=1317&bih=559

The farmer who discovered them while digging a well sits at the book shop and will autograph the book if you buy it. Not a bad schtick. Certainly beats digging 20 foot holes in the ground to find water. Now with that done, we can really start on the silk road. The silk trade started here and we’re all looking forward to that aspect. Since the trip is mostly Aussies, and well-traveled ones at that, most of them have a “Been here, done this” take on everything. Not calloused, just “Let’s get on with it.” They do talk about the changes they’ve seen since they were last here and that has been informative.

Most of the group went out for a special dumpling dinner last night, but it’s like those specialty dining options of cruises where you pay an extra $30 to eat in a different restaurant when you’ve already paid for all your meals. Saci, Lise, Carol and I decided we didn’t need that and ventured out to a restaurant on our own. It was a hilarious evening. Saci and I decided to let the women order the food. The menu had English below the Chinese characters and pictures of the dishes, which you would think made things easier. Silly us. The fish description referred to a photo four pages later on the menu. I ordered a beer, which was easy. I just said Tsingtao and the unsmiling, very businesslike woman taking the order wrote it down. Saci being Muslim doesn’t drink alcohol, and we spent five minutes trying to get him a sprite. They showed up with a Budweiser, and eventually he settled for a Coke. Coca Cola seems to translate into any language.

The ladies ordered four dishes or so they thought. First of all it is very intimidating since they bring you the menu and hover over you while you’re trying to decide what to order. Since Saci doesn’t do pork either we had to be careful of that since it didn’t always say what the meat was. Saci drew a picture of three concentric circles with a snout and pointy ears and showed it to the waitress. He drew a large “x” through it and that seemed to work as we said firmly “NO” and pointed to the picture. We actually got a smile out of her at that. The first dish arrived and we just looked at the dish, then at each other and then back at the dish and broke out into hysterical laughter. We still have no idea of what it was. Carol being the adventurous one tried it and began to pick small bones out of her mouth. It  looked like some centipede to me, but tasted fishy Carol said. She said it wasn’t bad, so Saci took a photo of the dish and in the back of the photo is Carol eating one of them. It’s one of those moments when you can catch someone with their mouth in a position that indicates the total opposite of what the reality is, and this was such a moment. She had this awful look on her face and when Saci showed the picture to us, we all lost it. Again! Nellie the Vietnamese stopped by the table and looked at the photo and got a really horrible look on her face. It was then that we knew we were in way over our heads. 

Ben, our guide, had earlier suggested we go to Pizza Hut across the street from the hotel. Hey, we’re in China, we’re not going to Pizza Hut. There was an eggplant dish on the menu  and Saci said he had never tried eggplant and still didn’t like it. But with this unidentifiable dish on the table  the comments like: “We should have gone to Pizza Hut,” “The eggplant is looking better,”  the other patrons in the restaurants must have thought there we were really nuts. Thankfully, it wasn’t very busy even though it was a classy place. We thought the ladies had ordered four things, but we only got three. It seems that is was one of those situations like when you hit the delete key in an email and it comes back and asks you if you really want to delete it and you have to confirm that action. At one point Lise said thank you to the waitress, and she returned with “No, thank you.” She just left it at that feeling that it was just a language thing. Well, it was just a language thing, because she didn’t confirm the action and we didn’t get the other item supposedly ordered. 

In the end, it was one of those traveling moments that we wouldn’t trade for anything. Whatever we paid was less than the humor value of the evening. We’re way over fed anyway, and we did go out for an ice cream on the street as we strolled back to the hotel. This morning Lise and Saci came down for breakfast after we were already there. Saci and I just looked at each other and broke out into laughter. It’s turning out to be one of those kinds of trips and everything is looking wonderful.

Let the trip begin,

Jim and Carol

In Order to Promote Domestic Tranquility

Apr 23, 2011

Security here can be as benign as police cruisers slowly trolling Tiananmen Square in their silent battery-operated golf carts and patrol cars always have their red/blue flashers on no matter the situation. It’s just like saying: “We’re here.” More up front and personal security is the continual  screening of all bags, purses, packages almost anywhere groups congregate. You go through screening to get on the subway, get into Tiananmen Square, enter the outer courtyard of the Forbidden City, then again with each new layer of the complex. There were three such screenings alone in the FC. One would think that once you get through screening and have passed successfully that further checks would be unnecessary. You can’t enter by any other method, so why the continuous disruption of the already huge, slow moving throngs? They don’t do the personal metal detectors like airports. My god, that would bring things to a total standstill. All shoes, belts, and emptying of pockets would just be impossible. I can’t help wondering if the lack of grumbling (which is recognizable even if you don’t speak the language) is a result of cultural acceptance, political expediency, or just a kind of robotic awareness that this is how things are. The war lords certainly maintained complete control, as did the emperors, so what’s the difference if this new form of government continues the process. But how this control is exercised is confusing. I can’t access my blog to post these letters, I can’t watch the gummy bear videos my grandsons drive everybody nuts with which is on youtube, but I can walk down the street to the “Yes Dear Love Boutique.” Whips, chains, and other kinky devices, whose uses  I can’t even imagine, are okay, The name of the store would indicate compliant Asian females, but the stuff inside the store certainly seems otherwise. And yes, I had to check it out. It’s a good thing names are written in Western letters in addition to the Chinese characters or I’d have missed this essential part of street life since there isn’t any outwardly indication of what’s inside from the windows.

Anything as complex as Chinese culture would be difficult to understand even with years of study, and to try in a few days/weeks is something I don’t even attempt. Checking my cultural baggage at the security check would be a good thing for all westerners as they come here. You can’t get upset at the huge throngs which push and shove, who jump in front of you while you’re standing patiently in line, nor at the massive crowds who seem to be everywhere you go. If you do get upset at these things, you’ll have a miserable time and you might as well stay at home and watch the Travel Channel.

Yesterday was a test of that theory as we went to the Forbidden City. Literally tens of thousands of people in knots of 50 or people all jostling to see something which was really quite unremarkable in the first place. It could be quite stunning, but it’s not kept up in any displayable condition, and somebody forgot to pay the utility bill because all buildings are dark inside and hence you can’t see anything in the various rooms, even if you could somehow manage to work your way through the tsunami-like surges of people working their way to the viewing windows. A good imagination is very helpful because the reality of what you’re seeing is particularly unspectacular. A trip to the Summer Palace was only marginally better.  I mean who do these people think they are anyway. Don’t they realize the temples and other regalia of a China long since having passed into oblivion are here for the tourists benefit?  

The Chinese visitors are remarkably orderly. Put 50,000 Americans in similar circumstances and there would be major riots at the inefficiency of the whole thing. Look at how gnarly people get if they get in the slow Costco line. Oh, wait a minute, that’s me. Most of the throng are, for lack of a better term, peasant class workers from the outer provinces. Their trip is sponsored by organizations and companies as a reward, and it’s pretty obvious that this is a HUGE deal to them. It’s the Chinese equivalent of the hadj to Mecca. This is probably their only foray into Beijing,  and although they are orderly, they are not adverse to making sure they don’t miss out on anything. After an hour of the jostling, Carol said she’d go home and watch “The Last Emporer” again to see what it’s like.

 Today we visited that iconic feature of Chinese tourism, the Great Wall. We went to a part of the wall that wasn’t  totally besieged by people, but that’s a judgment call. We headed out two hours from Beijing to get there early but it wasn’t early enough since the tour buses were all lined up ahead of us. We had the option of taking the gondola up to the top or walking and we opted for the rubber-legged end result of climbing literally thousands of stairs to get to the wall followed by an equal number to traverse various parts of it. Then we had the joy of reversing the process coming down. For whatever reason, the wall has never been on my list, but I must say I enjoyed it. It really hurts to admit I enjoy “Touristy” things.  On the way there we were told food options were limited but there was a Subway shop. Carol and I said we could get subway at home and brought snacks which we went through on top of the wall. We were really hungry by the time we reached the bottom and felt like the Star Trek episode where they have to feed Vol. There were lots of stands selling dried fruit and we sampled several and picked out some fresh bananas, dried apples and apricots and a few nuts. The lady then gave us the calculator which showed the price of what we’d chosen. The figure converted to $56. We just said, “Screw this.” She countered with “Okay, how much you pay.” We just laughed and walked away. Don’t try to tell me the Chinese haven’t gotten the concept of capitalism down pat. It may be a new idea in Communist China, but they are a fast study. Gouge of you can get away with it. We settled for a Subway Teriyaki Chicken sandwich. Carol waited in line because my back was talking to me. She came back laughing and said they gave her the option of putting bacon and pepperoni on the sandwich. Even subway makes cultural adjustments. Haven’t tried the pizza yet, wonder what those options are?  Back in the hotel, Carol informed me that she wasn’t walking anywhere tonight. I didn’t protest. 

Tomorrow will be a free day in Beijing and we’ll take the overnight train to Xi’an, the terra cotta warriors and the ancient start of the Silk road. I’ll be happy to get out of Dodge since a city of 13 million just doesn’t do it for me. I will say, however, that there are several things which impressed me about how things are run. Litter, for example, is non-existent. There are trash cans everywhere, and people use them. Separate bins connected for recyclables and general trash. You do see trash picker-uppers around, but they do a lot of standing because young and old alike use the bins.

It’s obvious that there is a burgeoning middle class here. I was told that there were 300 million VERY wealthy people in China. Of course, that means that there are a billion who are not. With that being said, the trickle-down effect of the money seems to be very much in play. I wonder if we’ll find it was like Russia where we were told that 90 percent of the wealth was found in Moscow. Beijing, Shanghai, and the other coastal mega cities certainly generate, but I have been impressed by the fact that there is  no shortage of people in shops spending more money than I have.

Although Shanghai is known as the architectural wonder of China, There are some impressively creative buildings here. I have no idea as to whether the designs are home grown architects or imported ones, but still somebody in  authority has to decide that the buildings fit both Asian sensibilities and a bold departure from the staid blocks structures we saw in Russia which were, simply put, monstrosities so kudos to whomever deserves it. Many people will remember the distinctive bird nest stadium from the Olympics, but that’s just a start. For a better look, go to:

http://www.google.com.hk/search?q=beijing+architecture&hl=zh-CN&newwindow=1&safe=strict&client=firefox-a&hs=7KQ&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivnscm&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=tkCzTduhEIOgvQO4rJmjBw&ved=0CF8QsAQ&biw=1317&bih=559

We walked back from our Peking duck (why isn’t it Beijing duck) dinner and found a lively food market on one of the main drags. A  couple of hundred yards of lined up stalls selling edibles on skewers. All kinds of seafood as you might expect but some you might not. Star fish, for example, and sea urchins. Then there some that certainly generated a lot of picture taking: Centipedes, grubs, scorpions, long horn water beetles, bumblebee larva and silkworm pupa, and grasshopper to name a few that I remember. Some I didn’t really want to know, but you won’t find them at Fred Meyers.

Just received a downer from John.  He told me that the single most visited spot for the Chinese is the terra cotta warriors. Oh well, it is supposed to be an adventure, right.

Y’all stay safe, you hear.

Jim and Carol

[ed. Wonderful picture of The Great Wall arrived today. Apparently Hello Kitty is having a fabulous time. Meow.]  

The 3rd Time is the Charm.....Maybe

Apr 22, 2011

One of the problems with getting up at somewhere between 1:30 and 3:30 to write and send out letters down in the lobby as my body adjusts to the 15 hour time change is that I can’t use my usual proof reader. Carol normally checks them for clarity and lets me know when I’m being obnoxious and/or obtuse. That doesn’t mean I’ll change it, but at least she makes me aware of it So the last letter went out I still referred to  World Expeditions, as World Encounters. I don’t know why I have such a brain lock, but I apparently do.  We’re with World Expeditions, that’s Ex-pe-di-tions

[ed. the name has been corrected in the previous post.]

The Group

The group has come together as one for the first and last time in this lifetime and we are a varied bunch of people who come from more places than seems on the surface.  There are 14 of us, larger than originally indicated since another tour was cancelled and three people jumped on board this trip. Technically we are 10 Aussies, 2 Canadians, and Carol and myself. However, that is the simple mathematics of the equations. The youngest is 51 and the oldest is not me, surprisingly, but a man who celebrates his 71 birthday today.

The Aussies:

Alan and “Fabulous” Fran as she introduced herself. He is a retired accountant while she was born in the Czech Republic and raised their three children. I got some points when I asked her if she worked outside the home. She said: “Oh, very good. I can get quite testy when people ask me if I work. I always respond ‘Very hard.’”

Minh and Nellie are Vietnamese who have lived in Australia for thirty years. She works in a Pharmacy and he defers to her for all questions. They each left Vietnam separately after the fall of Saigon in 1975. They both had families associated with the Military and government and had parents who were sent to concentration camps for seven years before being released and allowed to leave the country. They love Australia. Minh is still a mystery to me, but Nellie is typical-Vietnam sweet.

Thor and Michael are a gay couple who have been together for 32 years.  Thor is originally from Sweden and Michael from Sri Lanka. They were dancers with the Royal Ballet in London and danced with Dame Margot Fontyn and Rudolf Nureyev. They ended their careers dancing at the Lido and Moulin Rouge in Paris. Think “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” and you’re close.

Megan is a single female traveler and is everything I like about Aussies. She is brash, energetic, and raring to go.

Pamela is also a single traveler who was a high school geography teacher who   became a district superintendent. See how you missed the boat, Jerry :-)

John is the baby at 51 who was a communications entrepreneur and media consultant. He went to Japan with a school group and wound up going back and lived there for over 20 years. He now designs walking trails, like the Appalachian trail. He’s someone with whom I think I’ll enjoy talking.

Peter is a free lance photographer and doesn’t interact a lot with the group at this point. He’s busy doing his thing. He’s pleasant enough, just not the usual Aussie-friendly type.

The Canadians are Lise (rhymes with please, she explains) and Saci (prounounced “sassy”). I asked Lise if he was, and she said: “All the time.” She’s right, but in a wonderfully cryptic way. He is Algerian, who came to Ottawa on a scholarship and wound up marrying this young Acadian girl. He’s now a high school math teacher, and I think his classes would be a lot of fun. Lise works but I can’t remember what she does. We talk hockey and typically when I asked Saci how an Arab could take to Ice hockey, he replied. “Simple. It’s just soccer with skates.”

So it’s going to be a fun group and everybody interacts well. John and Saci are the two with whom I spend most of my time, but tables are set up for seven at each meal and you never know who you’ll wind up next to. Obviously, Carol and I sit together, but we’ve yet to be with anyone with whom we can’t have an interesting conversation.

Fire In the Hole

Apr 21, 2011

One thing we always enjoy in our travels is the food, and as much as it pains me to admit it, Carol is usually more adventurous than I am, at least in terms of stuff that can’t be identified. I’m better in eating off the street so I guess it all balances out. Today for lunch we were just exploring the city by foot letting the paths take us where they will. We ventured upon a little restaurant which was full of locals and went in. I often just look at what others are eating and when I find something that looks good, I’ll do the Harry and Sally thing and  say: “I’ll have what he/she’s having. Today, however, they had pictures on the menu and that facilitated ordering. When the waiter asked us if we wanted spicy or non spicy, we said “Spicy.” Hey, we’ve eaten Schezchan before. Well, he was right.  It was spicy. The rabbit dish came in a sea of those red peppers which you may have two or three in your meal at a restaurant at home. This literally had hundreds of them, and it was killer stuff. Habanera meets Chinese cooking. Moises would have loved it, but we suffered. Naturally we finished it,  but the memory remained long afterward. An ice cream stand helped ease the pain, but we’ll remember the lesson.

One of the most difficult things about traveling for a short time in foreign countries is avoiding making general comments about a culture when you in fact see so little of that culture in the time you actually spend in that country. It’s like Kenyans  trying to identify American culture after spending two weeks in Waco, Texas. We try to be keen observers and Carol and I always bounce what we see individually off the other to determine if it’s just one of us or if the other sees/feels the same thing. One real difference here in China is the lack of “family” in the traditional Asian sense. The one child policy of the government changes everything. You don’t see siblings playing, squabbling, and interacting. Mom, dad, and the one child sit at the table or walk down the street, but the whole setting is entirely different. We’ve talked about it on this trip and our other venture to china about seven years ago (Yunnan province) and we see it as making a large difference in how the culture manifests itself. Certainly family has traditionally been central to the culture and we can’t help wondering what changes it will bring in the long run.  This is not to say that Chinese children are/will be spoiled little snots who see themselves as the center of the universe, but certainly its gotta change the mix. Both Carol and I had one child each before we hooked up, and while they became brother and sister after time, they were essentially raised with them being the only child.  We couldn’t be happier about whom they’ve become, but then our kids are the exception because they’re perfect, right?

We walked out and about today and saw lots of different sides to the city. We went passed Lamborghini Porsche, and Maserati dealerships, looked in the Gucci windows and eyeballed shoe shops where the price of the shoes rivaled my car payment. My mother used to make me eat my squash by telling me that there were starving children in China. That may be true still, but let me tell you there is money here, and it’s displayed in an ostentatious manner. If you’ve got it flaunt it.  

But the contrast in the haves and have nots is  striking. All the cars seem to be new. I haven’t seen old clunkers chugging down the street, and yet we watched thousands of people riding bicycles which look like they belong in some museum featuring quaint methods of travel for the early 1900’s. Chic women in spike heels and Parisian couture have their hair styled in upscale salons while others look like they desperately need a bath and a good meal. We understand that the contrast is even more stark in Shanghai, but that’s not on our itinerary, but certainly there seems to be a cultural revolution taking place and I’m not talking about the Red Guards holding up Mao’s little red book. The young people look as boppy as you’ll find anywhere. Tinted hair, facial piercings and clothes which would make any thrift store teenie shopper in the US proud seem to indicate that Bob Dylan was right. You don’t need a weatherman to tell that things are changing;. Thankfully, tattoos don’t seem to be in thing just yet. Don’t know what that means, but I suspect the government is certainly trying to figure out how to control that change and still allow for the new freedoms which have taken place. The market economy seems to be flourishing and you can’t retreat from that. Put a little money in people’s pocket and they won’t settle for the old way. Allow for some levels of entrepreneurship and total government control is gone. They do keep the internet rules pretty stringent, however. This will not be Tunisia or Egypt here. There’s  no facebook, I can’t access my blog, Google pulled out for awhile, but they’re back, and there’s no youtube. Social control seems very much alive and thriving here.

Everything just seems to be on a grander scale here. Traffic on the main thoroughfares is five lanes wide in each direction and every lane is filled with cars. Streets are filled with people there is a bustle and haste to everything. It is NOT a relaxing place. Not a lot of shady, green spots to sit and relax. Where there are benches, they are filled. Restaurants are crowded, and the din is, well, let’s just say it’s noticeable. The Chinese are not a quiet people. They shout into their cell phones, talk loudly to people standing right next to them, and have conversations with people clear across the room from them – long conversations.

I thought that driving in Morocco was an adventure, but walking on these avenues certainly ups the ante. When  you cross the street with the green man, the danger only increases, because there are rules we obvbiously don’t understand. I’m the original bobble-head when crossing, continuously checking in all directions. Large intersections have those aforementioned five lanes of traffic coming from an equal number of directions. Carols and I have adopted the rule of getting into a knot of people and following them across the street, always keeping them between the line of cars barreling down upon you. It could be bowling for dollars if anybody gets hit. 

If I’m ever captured by alien powers and they want to torture me, they’d do well to just deprive me of sleep. I was awakened this morning by Carol rustling in the bathroom. Lights went on and then off, suitcases were unzipped and she seemed to be in the process of getting up. I felt really refreshed and when I asked her what time it was I heard her say: “5” So I asked her if she wanted to snuggle. She hurt my feelings when she reluctantly agreed. After a few minutes she rolled back over and I decided to go ahead and get up. Not wanting to disturb her, I dressed in the dark grabbed the laptop and went downstairs. After checking some things online, I began to get sleepy and asked the desk clerk what time it was.  It was 2:40. I don’t know how I got so confused but came back upstairs and had to try to get back into the sleep mode. Finally at the real 5:00 Carol stirred again and this time she did snuggle with her usual warmth. She then informed me that she just figured I couldn’t sleep and was going downstairs and so said nothing.  You’d think that two people who will celebrate their 33^rd anniversary on this trip would have better communication.

We’re really happy we came in two days before the group forms. It gives us time to time adjust (15 hours difference). Well, okay, some of us are adjusting better than others, and has allowed us the opportunity  to wander without any grand scheme to our plans. 

 Today was highlighted by our trip on the Beijing subway. We needed to go in search of that iconic American tourist spot – the hard rock café. We’ve collected shot glasses for our daughter where ever we’ve gone, and it’s usually an adventure in itself.  In Copenhagen, it was right in front of Tivoli Gardens, and that was a piece of cake, but here in Beijing, it’s off in the hinterlands, and unlike most places, when we found it, it was almost totally empty. Very Strange. But the subway ride, Jim….. The stations are extremely clean, in fact the whole city seems to be litter free with the exception of a building site which seemed to be a dumping ground. Trains are modern and comfortable, as long as you like to stand. A minimum of seats allows for a maximum of standing room. The Chinese veneration for us old farts does help, and people continuously gave Carol their seat. Maps are written in Chinese characters with western alphabetic letters below. Announcements about where you are and where you’re going are repeated in English so, all in all, it wasn’t nearly the adventure we’d anticipated. Unlike most systems which charge by the distance, here it is a flat 2 yuan, 25 cents. As befitting a city of 13 million it is the mode of transportation for the population as a whole. Good old Wikipedia tells me it’s only the 5^th busiest subway system in the world with a ridership of 1.5 billion a year. I don’t know about other days, but in the middle of the day today, a large percentage of them were on our train.

We walked down to the “Pearl Market” which does indeed have hundreds of pearl shops in it, but at the same time has everything a western consumer would want but really doesn’t need. “You want iphone?” came the call from all sides. “Special price for you only.” It’s like the souks in Marrakesh meet Oriental knowledge of western greed and glut on a grand scale. “REAL” Rolex’s glittered from every corner of our eyesight and it is a dazzling tribute to just what we think we need. It’s definitely a contrivance for westerners. Not a single oriental in the place. No matter what you pay, you’re gonna pay too much. Tee shirts for the boys start out at $20 and you buy them for $3 and you’ve still been had. They know the rules and always want you to tell them how much you want to pay. You have to haggle and it is an art form, but one which Carol abhors. I don’t like it either, but see it as a necessary evil. I know I’m gonna pay too much anyway, I’m just trying to limit the damage. Your ignorance is their strength.

 Additionally, in my last letter I talked about our tour company “World Encounters.” Keri the woman who handled my bookings receives the missives and informed me that it’s “World Expeditions.” She said if we had a lousy time to leave it, but that if we had a good trip to correct the issue.  World Encounters was actually  the company Carol and I used to take students to Europe. Carol proofread the letter and didn’t catch it either.  World Expeditions has some trips that we’re also interested in doing that are socially conscious travel. Humanitarian trips where you build schools and facilities. We have several friends who have done this: Kate,  with whom I used to work with at the travel agency, Lily, my sweet hamburger server at O’brady’s, and Bill, my neighbor, have all talked about how much these trips have meant to them personally. You can look at World Expeditions website for more information:

http://worldexpeditions.com/au/index.php?section=community_project_travel

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Apr 19, 2011

Greetings from Beijing:

Carol and I are off on a trip which has long been on the books and is finally finding fruition – to wit – the old Silk Road across China and into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. We’ll have 35 days retracing the old caravan routes into the hinterlands of China and across the mountains into Central Asia. It’s not a journey  which  we could do by ourselves so we opted for using a company with whom we traveled when we went to Tibet/Everest – World Encounters. Not cheap, but you get what you pay for, and that’s all you can ask for. Good infrastructure, well planned out itineraries, and, at least on our two trips with them, no Americans. What more can you ask for, dangling prepositions and all.

Traveling west from the left coast of the U.S. you follow the sun on its inexorable path and hence it is difficult to get any sleep since there are always those who keep their windows open so they can see the Pacific Ocean up close and personal from 35,000 feet. We flew Korean Air and were surprisingly pleased at the leg room. Individual entertainment centers made the 11 hour flight to Seoul more tolerable, and four movies, two meals later we landed.  Meals are served either western or Korean style. Carol took the Korean and I woozed out, as usual, for the western. Don’t get me wrong. I love Korean food, but given the fact that it was airline food, it’s gonna be marginal at best. Best part was real silverware. Knives and forks which have some heft to them and actually cut and skewer food as opposed to  the plastic crap which wobbles back and forth like a dowsing rod as soon as it comes anywhere close to food. The movies were up to date: King’s Speech, True Grit and others which were watchable. I started with the Gulliver’s Travels, but bailed on that one as soon as Jack Black dropped his pants and peed on all the Lilliputians to put out the fire. Okay that hasn’t been entertainment to me since 8^th grade.

Landing in Seoul took me back to our first Korean trip when we came for the wedding of our son, Jeff, and were greeted by this irrepressible little thing with a Mickey Mouse cell phone container hanging around her neck. This boppy young woman who was to become our daughter, Anjin, immediately worked her way into our hearts and being back was just another Déjà vu all over again, as Yogi would say. I saw her everywhere in the airport as I wandered waiting for our flight to Beijing to board. Great memory!!

We swiftly worked our way through Chinese customs and easily found the  man with the sign reading: “Jim/Carol” who transferred us to our hotel. We were so happy we prearranged our transfers since we were absolutely trashed. The drive in was marked by several gridlock situations even at 9pm. The fact that streets are very poorly lit and when combining that fact the Chinese wear predominately black clothes and bicycles and mopeds do not have headlights makes the  fact that there are over a Billion Chinese really remarkable. This dimly lit scenario seems rife for population control and we had several near misses on the way to  our hotel.

We wanted to walk around a bit before hitting the bed, but while the spirits were willing, the body said no. A valium to relax the body enabled us to have a good night’s sleep. I had forgotten how hard beds were in Chinese hotels, and I did my best “Pollo Broaster” imitation – 15 minutes to a side and then turn for continuous even discomfort. The hotel is a good 3 star quality place with all the usual accoutrements, cable TV,  shampoo, lotion and the six different styles of condoms. I guess in a country with a billion people privacy is not a big thing because lots of people leave their doors open as they sit there watching TV, combing their hair and all the other things people do in their rooms.  I had to pay the equivalent of $75 deposit. I asked what for, and was informed it was for the mini-bar. When I checked it out, there were two cokes and the Chinese equivalent of orange fanta. Expensive things these cokes. 

I found Wi-fi in the hotel lobby – with limitations. Couldn’t get into my work email and Facebook is blocked. Geek that I am I had to check hockey scores and other critical factors which make the world turn. Would love to say that when I travel I leave the world behind, but not so. Contact with my kids and other factors to which I always have to have access I can’t leave behind. Go Sharks, Go Giants!!!

Breakfast in the  hotel was Chinese  versions of Max and Alex (our grandsons) wielding plastic swords threatening anyone with instant decapitation should they venture within striking distance. Breakfasts are amazingly varied from fried eggs and bacon to seaweed soup and cooked cabbage and mustard greens, along with the ever present rice and noodles. Coffee strong enough to satisfy my buddy Armando helped open the eyes and get my body moving.

Our hotel is located close to Tiananmen Square and we walked up to get the legs some exercise. We passed the ever present police always standing at attention with their white gloves hanging stiffly at their sides, kept our eyes peeled for the battery powered mopeds which make no noise as they come up behind you, and just checked out the people. There was the old lady riding her bike with her white poodle leashed to her side. She (hopefully they wouldn’t do this to a male dog) had died pink ears and tail looking like some caricature sold in the tourist shops. Young girls all seem to buy the same clothes. Black panty hose and short, black skirts. Somebody should tell them that the reinforced top of the pantyhose is not attractive when the skirt is too short to cover it. Young men are tee shirted versions of their western counterparts, while the elderly conform to the stereotypical Chinese picture. The box jackets and what Carol refers to as “Ample” pants – room enough for two. The Olympics are over and the grey pall that is Beijing has once again descended upon the city. They cleaned up their act, literally, but now it’s business as usual.

We were greeted in Tiananmen by crowds that made Bergen in July look like a country picnic. I’ve never seen such a multitude. They were all there to see Mao’s body lying in state. They line was 4/5 wide and wove its way back and forth for over a mile, and I do not exaggerate. Groups of 40 -60 people shuffled their way through the ever slowly moving line. They wear the same colored hats for easy identification, I presume. Knots of yellow, pink, and the ever-popular orange looked like little groups of lego blocks being moved about.  We saw Lenin’s yellowed, waxy body in Moscow and saw no reason to replicate that experience simply so that we could say we saw the dead bookends of Communist power elite especially when it meant doing the Mao shuffle for an hour just to get in.

So as you can see, we’re doing it again. Off on our little version of “Let’s see as much of the world as we can.” We just wanted to get something off to those of you who knew we were traveling and to inform the rest of you that there are emails coming for the next few weeks.

There and Back Again: Tales From the Silk Road

Ed: We'll see how often Jim actually gets to post to the blog himself on this trip. Since the trip starts in Bejing, his first attempt to post was not successful.

From his email to me:
      No Facebook, no YouTube, and no access to Blogger here. 
     Can you say "Social Control"?

So... it looks like I may be Editor in Chief of these Slightly Bent Travels for at least part of this trip.
I will do my best to post his emails as they come in, but be patient... some days "Mayhem" and "Anarchy" keep my hands full!

mome

Portugal, Spain, and Morocco, April 2010

Once again we’ve hit the road. Jim’s back has sufficiently recovered from his ill-advised Icarus episode to permit travel and this trip can best be described as: hers, mine, and ours. Carol has been to Portugal many times, but it is a place I’ve never explored. On the other hand, I’ve been to Southern Spain, but because when Carol was in Portugal and Spain it was during the summer when the blast furnace hits that area, so she avoided death by dehydration. Add to these two situations, neither of us has ever been to Morocco, so for the next five weeks, we will do our best to fill in the missing colors in our paint by number travels.

Carol and Jim living large again

Date: Apr 6, 2010

Hello to all:
We arrived in Lisbon after a difficult but doable transatlantic crossing: Portland to Amsterdam to Lisbon. We had a five hour layover in Amsterdam, so we contacted our Dutch friends who we met last year on our Hutigruten cruise. Delightedly they came to the airport and we had a great visit, catching up on the world and remembering to Trash George Bush. It’s much more fun now that he and his henchmen are no longer in power. Their legacy remains, hence they remain still in our thoughts.

Carol has often talked about enjoying Lisbon and although we’ve only been here for one day, I can certainly see why. It’s a wonderful combination of old-world and the modern. It quickly etched its way into my heart when we stumbled on a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant which had all the elements of a great experience. We could have easily missed it. No flashing lights, no big signs, no imposing presence on the outside, only the word “Restaurant” written of the window. We tried to enter but the sign on the door said “Closed.” But as we passed by, I saw another door around the corner and when we tried it, it opened to a great scene of every table filled with people talking and laughing. No tourists here. Just locals enjoying what they knew was a great place to eat. A table had just become available and we grabbed it, just ahead of the people right behind us.

It was a mom and pop affair. He worked the tables while she dished up food. At the table next to us sat a very austere man, very grave in manner, but he knew his food. I just said: “I want what he’s having.” It was a delicous combination of fava beans, ox-tail, and sausages which had obviously been simmering for hours in a savory broth. At another table was a mixture of seven men and women who looked like they worked in an office building somewhere near. Three professionals at another table finished off their meal with cognac and cigars, while at another a grandmother and her grandson talked and enjoyed their time together. It obviously made Carol miss “Her boys.”

The male owner barked orders to his wife. She threw up her arms in frustration and barked right back, but with all the commotion they were efficient and really pleasant. He stopped by to see how we liked our meal, gave me a quizzical look with a questioning thumbs up. I responded in kind and he seemed quite pleased that the tourists had avoided all the glitzy restaurants in the area and chose his. After we finished and he gave us the bill, he brought us two shot-sized glasses with little handles which made them look like miniturized beer mugs, and a tall bottle. He gave us a kindly look and said that we had to have some “Grapa.” Carol declined, but he gave her his best: “I insist” look in his gentle way. Well, this local fire water is a combination of mouthwash and industrial strength cleanser. It is guaranteed to destroy anything which might dare to live in one’s mouth. It was like everclear on steroids. After the two glasses of wine with my meal and the grapa, my back didn’t hurt at all and I was ready for the next adventure of the day.

That turned out to be one of the old trams that still run certain routes in the city. The new, sleek ones can’t navigate the narrow streets of many parts of the city and hence the old ones from the early part of the 20th century still operate. They chug up and down the hills with the driver clanging his bell at anyone who has the temerity to step off the curb and endanger him/herself. The trams creaks and groans as it rattles down the track, and when a light changes, objects noisily to being made to stop. It’s the obvious sound of metal on metal as it lurches to a halt, which it does.

It’s an interesting facet of my mind that I need something like these experiences to really put me in the right mental state for traveling. Local experiences, local people and a true insight to where I’m at. It made for a great day, and even though my back eventually said it wanted to go lie down and would I please accommodate it, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I am ready and primed for tomorrow and all the days ahead. We’re on the road again, and I’ve go my best friend and translator by my side.

Live large and prosper,

C and J

Grapa revisited

Date: Apr 7, 2010

When I checked my email at 2 a.m. (can you say Jet Lag?) there was an email from my friend and travel client from Norway who asked if I was talking about “Grappa?” with two p’s. He’d run into the stuff in Italy once, and just hearing about it made him queasy all over again. I told him after a few drinks, I couldn’t even pronounce it, much less spell it. I found out it is indeed Italian in name, and that here in Portugal they call it Agua Ardente, which translates to “Burning Water.” So my description of it as firewater was not far off. Carol looked it up in her Portuguese dictionary and found it defined as Cognac. Well, we’re not talking about any cognac I’ve ever tried, and if it’s VSOP, then it stands for Very old, strong poison.

It’s a great time to be here in Portugal. The mornings are bright and crisp. I leave the hotel in a short-sleeved polo and Carol has her fleece jacket. I’m chilled and she’s toasty warm. By noon I’ve warmed up and she’s got her fleece wrapped around her waist. So pick your poison. No, wait. I’ve covered that already. It was about 22 C, or 75 F today. Southern Washington hasn’t seen 75 since the end of summer last year. Of course, I was confined inside for two months, but It remains my position that it’s been damn cold there.

The wisteria is in full bloom, and provides the patios with that wonderful lavender color as well as providing shade and a modicum of privacy to the patios which are overlooked by all the overviews of the city on the various hills. Orange blossoms fill the air with their sweet, aromatic bouquet, The loquats are ripening. Carol is amazed at how large they are here, the biggest she has ever seen. They are larger than our Santa Rosa Plums in California. The lantana hugs the ground and provides white and purple contrast to each other. It’s Spring in Portugal, folks.

The streets are crowded with tourists. Not Bergen in July crowded, but still there are lots of visitors. Seems like people know about this. We just hit it right, not by being smart, but because my wife didn’t want to miss the summer growing season at home, short though it may be.

I mentioned the hills and it is indeed like a Mediterranean version of the hills of Bergen, with little alleyways and pedestrian streets which seemingly lead nowhere but, in fact, keep going and eventually open up to a major street. The neighborhoods are so closely packed with such narrow access, that they had a fire in one house on one street in 1988, and because they couldn’t get any fire fighting equipment in, a whole section of the city burned down.

Lisbon is such an old city and many of the sections are in a very distinct stage of decay. I go back and forth with whether it’s old world charm, or city blight. Plaster falls from the outside walls, exposing the bricks and mortar of the building, old doors are rotting from the acid rain, and the red tile roofs are patched with a makeshift mixture to keep the weather out while the people are in.The azulejos, blue tiles, show the wear of being exposed for the centuries they’ve been attached to the buildings. They are cracked or missing and very faded. However, throughout the city there are home cement mixers whirring and the sounds of workers resonate from within the walls, so you know things are in a state of repair. I’ve never had the sense of abject poverty and the people seem well dressed and well fed.

They love their coffee and pastries are a national passion. On any given street there are Pastelarias and they are frequented by all throughout the day. Busy corners have kiosks where in two minutes while waiting for the bus, you can get your fix of both and never miss a beat, much less the bus. The Portuguese drink their espresso VERY sweet. The cups are small and they always bring two LARGE packets of sugar. I only use one in my café com leit, coffee with milk, and it’s still very sweet. My neighbor and friend from Nicaragua would be right at home here. He could drink it as sweet as he likes with out the jerk from down the street harassing him.

I’m a little surprised at what I would call a lack of fashion. I expected much more traditional/formal dress. This morning while waiting for the metro I scanned the platform across the tracks and there was only one woman with a dress/skirt. Everybody else had jeans or slacks. Now, maybe it’s just because I’m such a unobservant old fart, and jeans really pass for haute couture these days. There are more men in suits and ties, but still it has the feel of a more relaxed dress code than I expected.

A change for Carol, since forty years ago, is the number of black people in the city. Portugal had many African colonies and that would account for the large influx of immigrants, but that hadn’t happened yet when she was last here in the mid 60’s. I haven’t been able to talk to anybody about it yet, but there are numerous spray-painted messages of: “Nazis, go home,” for me to think there is some kind of backlash taking place. It’s been my observation that in many European countries that raped and pillaged their colonies for centuries don’t feel any obligation to open up their land to immigrants. Certainly, that was the case in parts of Scandinavia as we discovered last year. It’s interesting to me as an American to see countries trying to come to grips with the issue as we had to half a century ago.

Tomorrow it’s to the north. It will take us three days to go the 120 miles to Oporto. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed Lisbon. It’s such a treasure, rich in culture and full of warm, friendly people. We’re buoyed by the fact that we’ll have a couple more days here at the end of our trip. It all seems too short right at the moment.

We hope that all is well at home, and we send our love to all who receive these attempts to explain what we see.

C and J