China begins
Hello,
I'm currently taking a break from my studies (language, calligraphy, opera, history, taiji) at Nankai to update you on my early travels through China. This has potential to be long and boring, so please bear with me or just look at the photos or maybe just don't even read this.
Lingxi
Beijing
This is the lotus pond at Tsinghua. Tsinghua and Beida are China's most prestigious colleges. Any village, school, or city who sends a student to Tsinghua or Beida sends him or her with much celebration. We stayed here for a few days while touring Bejing.
Here are some elders dancing by Tsinghua. This pavillion was a popular place for social gatherings.
Here is a man holding an earth-bound kite at Tiananmen Square. It was "so surreal" and "pretty amazing" to wander through the stuff of history books. We got a preview of what was to come in Tiananmen--we (blondes) were stopped for pictures every few feet. If they were too shy for pictures, they'd nudge their friends and whisper "waiguo ren" (Mandarin for foreigners); little did they know we could understand.
This is just a cute kid in a big jacket.
Dangran (of course) we spent several hours at the Forbidden City. The few days we were in Beijing, our bus drivers and teacher told us several times the sky hadn't been so blue in decades. They say living in a city like Beijing does the same for your lungs as a two-pack-a-day habit.
Another picture from inside the Forbidden City.
Hanging out on a crowded bus.
This grand Summer Palace was a favorite hangout of the imperial families. You can't go wrong with places with names like The Tower of Buddhist Fragrance.
We climbed to the top for some pretty sweet views.
Another view...
Chengde
We drove quite a way from Beijing before stopping to see the Great Wall. We were essentially the only tourists at Jinshan, which locals (and at least a few legitimate sources) call the best and most beautiful site from which to see the Wall.
Practicing some taiji.
Huang Anlun (Aaron) and I posing in front of a pretty sweet squatty-potty.
Here's a video of the Taiji-ers.
We got an imperial welcome in Chengde: a meal with several thousand courses, speeches, video cameras, toasts, etc. etc. A flash seemed kind of rude, so this picture'll have to do.
Another ceremonious gathering at a teacher's college in Chengde. The teachers and students were glad to receive us and ask us questions about America in broken to fluent English.
Huang Anlun really likes being photographed. Here, he stands in front of our favorite ice cream stand at the Jinjiang Wenguan. He is full of mirth because the girl's shirt reads Abercrombie and Titch.
George and the "paparazzi" (affectionately named) touching a statue for luck.
This is the first of many pictures of deer. The deer of the Deer Viewing Pavillion were tame, except for the one that kicked Jian Litian in the stomach. I got some good belly laughs out of that incident, HA.
See, here's Angie feeding some deer.
"A Rock to Watch fishes." One of the 36 sights at Qianlong.
A man painting around the same place.
Nora, Vanessa and I emulating statues in a temple. We later found out this was a bad move, but no one, no people anyway, were around to see.
Kunming lake. A man across the lake was playing beautiful music, and we decided the nicest thought was that he was doing so not for money nor for attention, but for the music.
I took this photograph laughing at the fact that a crazy man had just clucked and gyrated around us across the lake. But it turned so not funny when we saw him still coming toward us----with a harpoon. Yeah, for real. He pretended to throw it at us and laughed and laughed and resumed the chase. We told the police, and they laughed, telling us to give them a phone call if we needed to talk again.
Sunset over our magnificent bus in Chengde.
This is a brief video of the performance put on by some students (I think?) from Chengde. It was very good.
They told us if we could jump over this gate, we'd become dragons. The picture came out kinda cool.
Here's a Chengde cityscape kind of picture from the top of the temple.
Spinning the Buddhist prayer wheels at Puning.
Monks making music.
This is the biggest standing Buddha in China, or something like that. It was... jaw-dropping, awe-inspring, whatever I'm already a huge cliche.
A street performer. He was impressive.
Christian, Ross, and Jack with some little girl in emperor costumes. Weishenme? Wo bu zhidao.
Picture from the roof.
Inner Mongolia
This is the view from our "hotel room" at the "resort" in Inner Mongolia. It was freezing and a little dirty, but worth the trek.
We went outside to play a little hackysack and have some conversations...
This is the same view a few minutes later.
I cannot even explain to you how I felt this night. Our Menggu friends were trying hard to make us happy, but that meant karaoke and LOUD techno music (who knew they had such good setups?), fresh-roasted lamb, and a raging bonfire. We had a brief moment of universal human understanding when we joined hands and danced around the fire, but it quickly ended with renditions of Happy Birthday and northerly winds.
Here's a horse-drawn carriage racing across the grasslands.
A view of us crossing the steppe on the way to the General's lake. I never thought I'd feel so much like attacking a village or something.
Thanks, Huang Anlun, for being such a good photographer. This picture makes me laugh, like, a lot.
My magnificent steed and the owner of the horse. I was allowed to ride on my own.
We climbed to the top of some hill. It was pretty magnificient.
The view from the top.
Heck yes we stayed in yurts.
Menggu fan is infinitely better than Beijing fan. This is Ross, some flower tea and the most delicious meal we'd had yet. I don't remember it, but it probably consisted of a lot of huasheng and doufu.
We got a little tired outside Yurtville.
Nora and Vanessa contemplating life on the grasslands.
Zander and Khanh getting chilly before another bonfire.
There it is. They always played this dance song that went left, left, right, right, go, turn around, go go go.
Zander standing in front of the aobao. We circled it three times as tradition dictates. They told us it's a meeting place because grasslands are somewhat lacking in landmarks.
Journeying back to the coast
Some dog in front of a gas station.
The other side of the same gas station. Zhen haokan.
A man and a child along the path up the mountain.
A man peddling his wares, but not looking too gaoxing about it.
Aaron and I doing the T-rex in front of Sledge Hammer. Legend tells us that if you touch that rock, you live to One Hundred Thirty. We all touched it.
A pretty sweet picture of Vanessa "jumping off" Sledge Hammer.
Here's a crazy Chinese tourist who thought we were so funny jumping off that she tried to imitate us. It didn't work out too well. I can tell she's on solid ground.
Chengde threw us ANOTHER banquet. We had five or six layers of plates on the lazy susan by the end of the night. They really knew how to treat us, though, with baijiu and bingjiling.
Me and the roomie.
The Village
Here we are at a press-conference kinda thing, where a bunch of a village's officials welcomed us and introduced us to their wonderful homes.
Strange, strange times. We blinked in the sunlight and saw these people dancing for us.
A couple showed us around their largely state-financed apartment, complete with a HUGE television and a HUGE fish tank.
This model Chinese village also featured a giant, space-age fountain.
We walked around the school for a bit and talked to the kids.
These kids played with guns and followed us around for quite a while.
Here's a video of Jianke, Dawei and a few other boys racing the kids. They were real amped about it.
Just a shot of the bus, in memoriam of that 12-hr bus ride that had us all itching like four-year-olds by the time we got to Tianjin.
I'm currently taking a break from my studies (language, calligraphy, opera, history, taiji) at Nankai to update you on my early travels through China. This has potential to be long and boring, so please bear with me or just look at the photos or maybe just don't even read this.
Lingxi
Beijing
This is the lotus pond at Tsinghua. Tsinghua and Beida are China's most prestigious colleges. Any village, school, or city who sends a student to Tsinghua or Beida sends him or her with much celebration. We stayed here for a few days while touring Bejing.
Here are some elders dancing by Tsinghua. This pavillion was a popular place for social gatherings.
Here is a man holding an earth-bound kite at Tiananmen Square. It was "so surreal" and "pretty amazing" to wander through the stuff of history books. We got a preview of what was to come in Tiananmen--we (blondes) were stopped for pictures every few feet. If they were too shy for pictures, they'd nudge their friends and whisper "waiguo ren" (Mandarin for foreigners); little did they know we could understand.
This is just a cute kid in a big jacket.
Dangran (of course) we spent several hours at the Forbidden City. The few days we were in Beijing, our bus drivers and teacher told us several times the sky hadn't been so blue in decades. They say living in a city like Beijing does the same for your lungs as a two-pack-a-day habit.
Another picture from inside the Forbidden City.
Hanging out on a crowded bus.
This grand Summer Palace was a favorite hangout of the imperial families. You can't go wrong with places with names like The Tower of Buddhist Fragrance.
We climbed to the top for some pretty sweet views.
Another view...
Chengde
We drove quite a way from Beijing before stopping to see the Great Wall. We were essentially the only tourists at Jinshan, which locals (and at least a few legitimate sources) call the best and most beautiful site from which to see the Wall.
Practicing some taiji.
Huang Anlun (Aaron) and I posing in front of a pretty sweet squatty-potty.
Here's a video of the Taiji-ers.
We got an imperial welcome in Chengde: a meal with several thousand courses, speeches, video cameras, toasts, etc. etc. A flash seemed kind of rude, so this picture'll have to do.
Another ceremonious gathering at a teacher's college in Chengde. The teachers and students were glad to receive us and ask us questions about America in broken to fluent English.
Huang Anlun really likes being photographed. Here, he stands in front of our favorite ice cream stand at the Jinjiang Wenguan. He is full of mirth because the girl's shirt reads Abercrombie and Titch.
George and the "paparazzi" (affectionately named) touching a statue for luck.
This is the first of many pictures of deer. The deer of the Deer Viewing Pavillion were tame, except for the one that kicked Jian Litian in the stomach. I got some good belly laughs out of that incident, HA.
See, here's Angie feeding some deer.
"A Rock to Watch fishes." One of the 36 sights at Qianlong.
A man painting around the same place.
Nora, Vanessa and I emulating statues in a temple. We later found out this was a bad move, but no one, no people anyway, were around to see.
Kunming lake. A man across the lake was playing beautiful music, and we decided the nicest thought was that he was doing so not for money nor for attention, but for the music.
I took this photograph laughing at the fact that a crazy man had just clucked and gyrated around us across the lake. But it turned so not funny when we saw him still coming toward us----with a harpoon. Yeah, for real. He pretended to throw it at us and laughed and laughed and resumed the chase. We told the police, and they laughed, telling us to give them a phone call if we needed to talk again.
Sunset over our magnificent bus in Chengde.
This is a brief video of the performance put on by some students (I think?) from Chengde. It was very good.
They told us if we could jump over this gate, we'd become dragons. The picture came out kinda cool.
Here's a Chengde cityscape kind of picture from the top of the temple.
Spinning the Buddhist prayer wheels at Puning.
Monks making music.
This is the biggest standing Buddha in China, or something like that. It was... jaw-dropping, awe-inspring, whatever I'm already a huge cliche.
A street performer. He was impressive.
Christian, Ross, and Jack with some little girl in emperor costumes. Weishenme? Wo bu zhidao.
Picture from the roof.
Inner Mongolia
This is the view from our "hotel room" at the "resort" in Inner Mongolia. It was freezing and a little dirty, but worth the trek.
We went outside to play a little hackysack and have some conversations...
This is the same view a few minutes later.
I cannot even explain to you how I felt this night. Our Menggu friends were trying hard to make us happy, but that meant karaoke and LOUD techno music (who knew they had such good setups?), fresh-roasted lamb, and a raging bonfire. We had a brief moment of universal human understanding when we joined hands and danced around the fire, but it quickly ended with renditions of Happy Birthday and northerly winds.
Here's a horse-drawn carriage racing across the grasslands.
A view of us crossing the steppe on the way to the General's lake. I never thought I'd feel so much like attacking a village or something.
Thanks, Huang Anlun, for being such a good photographer. This picture makes me laugh, like, a lot.
My magnificent steed and the owner of the horse. I was allowed to ride on my own.
We climbed to the top of some hill. It was pretty magnificient.
The view from the top.
Heck yes we stayed in yurts.
Menggu fan is infinitely better than Beijing fan. This is Ross, some flower tea and the most delicious meal we'd had yet. I don't remember it, but it probably consisted of a lot of huasheng and doufu.
We got a little tired outside Yurtville.
Nora and Vanessa contemplating life on the grasslands.
Zander and Khanh getting chilly before another bonfire.
There it is. They always played this dance song that went left, left, right, right, go, turn around, go go go.
Zander standing in front of the aobao. We circled it three times as tradition dictates. They told us it's a meeting place because grasslands are somewhat lacking in landmarks.
Journeying back to the coast
Some dog in front of a gas station.
The other side of the same gas station. Zhen haokan.
A man and a child along the path up the mountain.
A man peddling his wares, but not looking too gaoxing about it.
Aaron and I doing the T-rex in front of Sledge Hammer. Legend tells us that if you touch that rock, you live to One Hundred Thirty. We all touched it.
A pretty sweet picture of Vanessa "jumping off" Sledge Hammer.
Here's a crazy Chinese tourist who thought we were so funny jumping off that she tried to imitate us. It didn't work out too well. I can tell she's on solid ground.
Chengde threw us ANOTHER banquet. We had five or six layers of plates on the lazy susan by the end of the night. They really knew how to treat us, though, with baijiu and bingjiling.
Me and the roomie.
The Village
Here we are at a press-conference kinda thing, where a bunch of a village's officials welcomed us and introduced us to their wonderful homes.
Strange, strange times. We blinked in the sunlight and saw these people dancing for us.
A couple showed us around their largely state-financed apartment, complete with a HUGE television and a HUGE fish tank.
This model Chinese village also featured a giant, space-age fountain.
We walked around the school for a bit and talked to the kids.
These kids played with guns and followed us around for quite a while.
Here's a video of Jianke, Dawei and a few other boys racing the kids. They were real amped about it.
Just a shot of the bus, in memoriam of that 12-hr bus ride that had us all itching like four-year-olds by the time we got to Tianjin.