Scorpion Skewer

Last night, the core four of us — Juli, Jon, me, and KP — went to Tian'an'men Square and then walked down past Wanfujing Dajie to the night market. At the night market, I resolved to eat a scorpion. But as you can see from the video, I almost lost my nerve. It was tasty though. Very similar to shrimp, or pumpkin seeds, depending on which part you eat. It's crunchewy, so the body tastes shrimpy, the legs and pincers pumpkin-seed like. But I think it's much too scary looking to eat, just in general. Also when the scorpions are on display sometimes they are still alive and trying to sting things. They are just creepiest creepy crawlies ever. Ugh.

Click here for the video, or right-click to download (you have to do this in case you click the link and see jibberish). Requires Quicktime 7 or iTunes 6.

Far From Home...and a Funny Website

I didn't realize that it was such a long journey to get to Peking University from my house, but in fact the total journey is 6,650 miles, according to Google Earth. So in addition to my 10,000 mile trip, I have to go 6,650 miles to get home. So it works out to a grand total of 23,600 miles...plus about 400 to Pingyao and back brings all the traveling to a nice round 24,000 miles.

BeijEnglish

This is a funny website that has screwy signs from around Beijing. I found it quite funny.

While we're at it, I ran across this a while back, and I got a kick out of it.

A Pictorial Guide to Life in China

Lush

What is Lush? Lush is a smell, a noise, a quality of light. Lush is life.

Or maybe it's just a nice little bar in Wudaokou.

Me, I'm tired of Lush. The smell is cigarette smoke, and the noise is made by drunk people and bad singers. But some of our students still go every single day. And I don't blame them. Lush is a comforting bastion of spoken English in a Chinese world, and the alcohol is priced very reasonably.

These pictures are from our first experience with Lush. We had a good time. I drank a Bacardi Breezer and a half and got very stupid. Which is pathetic, I guess. I'm such a lightweight. But, that's OK, because later I tried drinking a cosmopolitan, got sick, and lost my taste for alcohol completely.

Pooja doesn't drink but is somehow able to handle drunk people very well and get dry drunk on the energy. It's a great talent.

Kelvin and myself.

Pooja and Jon

A yeeeeesss I seeeee what you mean, Kelvin...

A Good Day in China

Recently we had an interesting Saturday. The program arranged for a demonstration of Chinese painting and calligraphy by a modern master, Xu Qingping, son of the great master of China Xu Beihong at the Xu Beihong museum near Houhai.

As it turns out, even great calligraphy is pretty boring to watch. Especially if you can't read the characters. Still, it was pretty cool, and he wrote a poem for us, which would probably sell for a lot of money if he wanted to sell it. Chinese art is an interesting form, because it doesn't take long to make a painting—a great painter can make a convincing cat in one stroke. But the form is ink on silk or paper; if you make a mistake, you have to work it in or abandon the project. So it takes years and years and years to be able to do the work, and that creates the value. But because the paintings and calligraphy are so quick, they are often used as gifts from one artist to another. For example, it used to be a custom among scholars to leave a little poem at the door if they came and you weren't home.




After the demonstration, I walked around with Jon, Patrick and Jon's friend from AU that sort of turned up randomly on the bus. We had a very spicy lunch, and then came across this very fascinating day market.


That night everyone went to Lush, but that was getting boring, so we went to Juli, Li and KP to the Be For Time Tea House, where 18 kuai will buy you unlimited beverages for 5 hours. We stayed until 4 o'clock in the morning and then we went home, watched half of the Ladykillers (Tom Hanks), and finally all fell asleep on Juli's bed when the sun came up. Except for Li, who got tired of us and went to bed early.

Jon and I with some tea. You could get other drinks too, like red bean snow cones or cappucino.

I haven't done food closeups in a while. These are provided for snacking purposes.

All of us having a good time together.

Irony

There you have it. Probably the nicest example of the infamous Chinese toilet. They think it's a disgusting idea to sit where someone else's naked butt sat. But a recent study revealed that there are only 42 bacteria per square inch of toilet seat in public restrooms, compared to 10,000 per square inch on a telephone receiver. So it's all perception folks. Another barrier to Western toilets is that the Chinese hate to use paper (one of our teachers even reused the back of what seemed to be fairly confidential personal documents to print handouts for class!) so toilet seat covers are out of the question!

This particular toilet is usually cleaner than this. It's located in the SIS building on the bottom floor next to our classroom/office.

Da Trip — 大行程

There are only two and a half weeks left before we take off for parts unknown. So today I'll give you a guided tour of our planned route via the magic of Google Earth.

This is a "Da" (大-big) Trip! We will cover a grand total of almost exactly 10,000 miles over the course of 5 weeks!

Dr. Sun told us an ancient Chinese proverb: "To be a truly educated man, one must read 10,000 books and travel 10,000 miles." Well, I guess it will be a while before I manage the reading, but it looks like the travel is taken care of!


Above you can see the route. Beijing to Xi'an to Chengdu to Lhasa, back to Chengdu, on to Guilin, then down the river to Yongshuo, from there proceeding to Shanghai, then saying goodbye to the other students who will return to Beijing. Then John, Juli, KP and I will fly back to Chengdu, and visit Emei Shan and Leshan. From there we'll return to Chengdu to catch a plane or train to Kunming, gateway to Yunnan. We'll next relax in Dali and Lijiang for a few days before we attempt to get to Jiuzhaigou (Heaven on Earth). Then back to Kunming to grab a plane to Bangkok. After that we'll hit the craziest beach party on earth, the full moon party on Koh Phangan, then back to Bangkok and from there to Beijing, and then home. And then I'll be sick of airplanes!

Xi'an


Xi'an is famous as the home of the terra cotta soldiers. So that's what we're going to see. They also have a mostly intact ancient city, which they're working to preserve. Recently they decided to move the administrative center of the city 30 miles away from the ancient city and begin a massively expensive restoration project to help protect their tourism business.



Chengdu


The main reason to go to Chengdu is to see Pandas. But that's a very good reason to go to Chengdu, isn't it?



Lhasa


Lhasa is Tibet's biggest city and home to Potala Palace. It is rapidly modernizing, but we're going to look for the old spirituality of the place. It still exists somewhere.



Guilin & Yongshuo


The most incredible landscape ever, we are told. We are going to raft down the Lijiang river on the little reed boats used by fishermen to Yongshuo, our next stop.


At Yongshuo, we'll rent bikes and ride around amongst the peaks.



Shanghai


Almost before we have a chance to catch our breath, we'll be on our way to Shanghai. I'm not sure what there is to see there, but "it's the world's most exciting city", and "Beijing is boring by comparison" so there is surely something to take in.



Emei Shan


Here we will spend four days climbing up thousands of stairs for kilometer after kilometer, fighting off evil monkeys. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Well, they say climbing Emei Shan is like touching the base of heaven, and it has the most diverse greenery of any mountain in China. It's also home to China's first Buddhist temple.



Le Shan Giant Buddha


We're going to hit this either before or after Emei Shan. Probably before, since Emei Shan is guaranteed to be a struggle. This is the world's Largest Buddha, built over the course of 90 years to try to protect the boats on the river.



Kunming


Kunming is a reportedly very beautiful and not very exciting city. But they have an airport, which is what we need.

Dali


Dali is a good place to relax, with an enormous lake and cormorant fishermen. We're going to stop by here to take it easy for a while.



Lijiang


One of the most beautiful cities in China and reputedly, the entire world, Lijiang was struck by a devastating earthquake in 1996 that, perhaps thankfully, destroyed every single modern cement block structure. The city council seized the opportunity to require all new structures to conform to traditional architectural styles for both earthquake safety and civil beautification.

The city is built over many many small canals and streams, with hundreds of bridges. This will be a nice place to stay for a while.

Jiuzhaigou


This is a new national park, barely accessible in the mountains on the border of Tibet, that is called "Heaven on Earth". A high calcium concentration dyes the water of the lakes an incredibly pleasing shade of blue and, over millions of years, has built up calcium deposits into high dams which have created shallow, beautiful pools that spill from one to the next in a series of extremely dramatic waterfalls. This area is near the three parallel rivers national park which has the highest biodiversity of any area in China.







Bangkok


Apparently a great city, but not nearly as interesting as the rest of the country. Jon has a lot of experience, since he lived in Thailand for a year and he'll give us some more suggestions of what to hit. Meanwhile we have to apply for a tourist visa so that we can get back to Beijing and collect our stuff.

Koh Phangan


A major reason to go to Thailand is to see the beaches. This particular beach hosts the biggest craziest beach party ever, every full moon. They call it the full moon party. They get the world's most famous DJs and Fire Dancers and then do drugs and dance and stuff. I don't know how much participating we'll do, but we're told it's "an experience" regardless. I don't know if the German dude in the picture is having a not-so-good time or if he just got taken by surprise by the flash.


And that's our trip! Google Earth puts it at 9,950 miles. And we'll surely get in an extra 50 just getting around our destinations.


I'm working on putting up the rest of my pictures by the time we leave!

Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

I never got around to posting my first couple of week's photos, so I'm going to work on catching up.

It was the first week, the second full day in China, and they got us up early to go to see the sights of downtown Beijing.

Everyone piled into the bus.

Lots of police vans run around in Beijing. Sometimes you see them with all kinds of deadly looking weapons inside, but it turns out that their job is to put money in ATMs.

Our first stop was Jingshan park. There were a lot of people doing all sorts of morning activities. This piaoliang senior citizen was doing ribbon dancing.

Then she lent us her ribbons, so we all played with them for a while.

This little girl asked her dad to take a picture with the girls with pretty hair, so Jenny and Emily obliged.

Jingshan Park has a hill that gives you a great panorama of the city, including the Forbidden City on the south side.

Andrea, Li, KP, and Me. I didn't know their names yet.

Another view of the Forbidden City from the top of the hill.

Here I am in front of the National Museum, with the Olympics countdown in the background. I traded cameras with KP here, and that's how we met.

A monument to the heroes of the revolution.

This is why you're not allowed to take pictures in Tiananmen Square.

Tiananmen (天安门), "Gate of Heavenly Peace", bearing Mao's portrait.



Inside the gate.

Inside the Forbidden City, in front of the largest of the throne rooms (they seem to have a built a new, bigger, better one for each successive ruler).

The Forbidden City does a good job of swallowing up tourists. It seemed almost abandoned.

The city is also impressively massive. Everything is BIG. I put KP there for scale.



It really did deserve five stars, in my opinion. Especially after all I heard about how bad Beijing toilets are (and as further experience has shown, they get pretty bad).

A nice area with some trees and a nearby Starbucks.

The way out at closing time.

The color guard drilling for the evening flag ceremony. They must march exactly 90 cm apart and each step must be exactly 75 cm.