Monday, November 9, 2009
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Hong Kong
I went to Hong Kong for visa reasons. Although Hong Kong is part of China, you must pass through customs, completely exiting China. It feels much different from China for many reasons. For one, they speak Cantonese and use the traditional, more complex form of writing. The city design is obviously influenced by the British. There is freedom of press and the people can actively show their dissent in various ways similar to North America and European countries.
The people are more religious as well. Some continue ancestor worship traditions in which fake paper money, "hell money", and paper repres
entations of material goods are burned as offerings intended to service the dead in the afterlife. This photograph is of a paper boat that will be burned, perhaps for a deceased fisherman to continue his fishing. There are paper cars (often replicas of expensive brands), houses, karaoke sets, televisions, washing machines, clothes, and racetracks.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Mongolia
Daniel and I took a 10 day trip to Mongolia early this month. We took a 30 hour train ride from Beijing to Ulaan Baatar (the capitol of Mongolia) which was pleasant and amusing. The gauge of the train tracks is 1435mm in China and 1520mm in Mongolia and Russia so the train cars must be hydraulically lifted so that the wheels can be adjusted to make the switch. I'm not sure if the whole wheel sets must be changed or merely adjusted--they seemed to be adjusted as we watched the train cars lined up next to us.
More later...
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Getting Used to Beijing
While I was in Japan, I had been missing bits of China. I love both cultures but more superficially, it was a bit tiring to be pinching pennies in expensive Japan than breathing easy in China. For example, it's more enjoyable to be able to eat your fill on $4 than to barely be satisfied on $9. Of course, after the build-up, my first meal back in Beijing with Daniel and Alec was a harsh reminder of all the little things that are sometimes a problem in China. We went out to get a late dinner at a chain restaurant, Zhou, which specializes in rice porridge. First, it takes a long time to get a waitress to take our order and then she informs us that they don't have any rice to go with the dishes we ordered. Rice is essential for diluting the strong flavors and heavy oils. How can a rice porridge restaurant have no rice? They must've at least had it in porridge form.
A week ago, I saw a grandmother passing me on the sidewalk wearing an over large cheap white t-shirt with "I (heart) Myspace" screened on the front. I can't imagine where it came from.
The Olympics were worrisome at first with fears of terrible crowds, high prices, and excessive security. But it turned out pretty well. I was mostly disappointed that the equestrian events were in Hong Kong and I was never able to watch them on TV or online. I do love watching horses. Overall, I am not fond of the Olympics since they seem to be more about making certain sponsors rich or fostering nationalism than they are about creating goodwill and peace on Earth. However, it was amazing to see so many sharp, well-behaved volunteers.
The photos show the variation in air during the Olympics. It's not necessarily all smog, a lot of it is the usual haze you get with warm, muggy weather. But it's not always pretty.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Border Crossing: China to Kazakhstan
A Kazakh consulate exists in the famous Silk Road city, Urumqi, next to a myriad of neighborhood alleys that all have the same name but get disconnected by intersecting blocks. When we finally wandered out of the maze, into wider, recently-developed streets, the flags and the line of Kazakhs made it obvious. The line was orderly, it was in fact a line, but everyone stood pretty close to their neighbors and were cheerily chatting away while a large, intimidating guard stood glaring at them from the gate. We stood and watched for about ten minutes, and scanned some papers on a noteboard, trying to get a grasp of the process for entering the building. Someone must've indicated that we enter the gate so we apprehensively approached the scowling guard who, when we showed him our American passports, miraculously gave way. Apparently the line was for Kazakh nationals and there was another process for other foreigners. The building looked like a house. A bit of yard in front and a short stairway up to the entrance. Inside we managed to get our paperwork done with a mix of English and Chinese. With one clerk, we couldn't seem to figure out which language the pair of us knew more of.
Visas in hand, we were ready to enter Kazakhstan. From Urumqi, we took an overnight bus to one of the border towns. There is a train from Urumqi to Almaty (the once-capital of Kazakhstan and a large city on the South-Eastern side of the country). We arrived in this tiny, dusty Chinese border town Sunday morning to find out that the border is closed on Sundays. So we drove around with our taxi driver, looking for a place to stay. He would report the price of a suggested place and always, I would answer, we need something cheaper, cheaper. Finally, he said, I know a place, and drove to the outskirts of town along the main (half dirt) highway. Turned out to be his house. He explained that a Uzbekistani man was also staying at his house that night and he could take all of us to the border tomorrow. The price would include our meals. He and his wife (they were both Kazakhs who had been raised in China and were both teachers) would take care of us.
Their house was a series of four rooms arranged linearly with a glass covered hallway along one side that let in a lot of light. The sleeping rooms had raised floors so that the entry was a bit lower, intended to be a place to step out of your shoes. The raised floors were covered in rugs and had low tables. Along the walls were stacks of bedding to be rolled out in the evening. The glass hallway faced the yard which may be a garden in the later spring but still seemed to be dormant. In the corner of the yard was the outhouse which included a box of loose school papers with childrens drawings on them to be used for toilet paper.
We spent the day playing cards quietly and went on a walk in the late afternoon because the house began to feel confining. The taxi man was out all day, working, and his wife was sweet but busy with her own tasks so we were left alone.
In the evening we ate and tried to chat. The taxi man and his wife were able to speak Uighur, I think, which is the local minority language and is similar to Uzbek so they could speak to their other guest. They could then speak to me in Chinese. So we were able to gather that the Uzbek man had been in China on business and learned about our hosts' situation as Chinese citizens.
The next morning, we finally made it to the border. We had no idea what an ordeal we were facing. Airports are extremely efficient border crossings because there is a lot of money involved in keeping the travelers moving on those flights. Rich people cross borders that way and they don't want to wait. Trains are also usually orderly and fairly quick. Walking across the India-Nepal border was fine, it was even lazy. Since there was no line for those walking, it was simple. There was a long line of cargo trucks but that didn't conflict with our crossing.
The China-Kazakhstan border crossing was hell. First there was a mass of people waiting (in no real line) outside the gate into the Chinese side. People were carrying large boxes over their heads that contained rice cookers, tvs, rc cars, and fans. This was also the first time I was seeing white people again. It took me a while to realize they were all Russians. I was also shocked to be seeing women in black leather with scarves in their hair, gold front teeth, and a black eye.
After the first gate into the Chinese border, there was a crush to get your stuff through the x-ray machine. Next was a rush to get on shuttle buses that drove the mile distance between the border processing buildings. So on the Kazakh side, we had to go through the same thing; another crush for an x-ray machine, and another round of filing through bottleneck gates. Then, when we had been released into the wide Kazakh expanse with no more need to be crushed together, we had to pay another shuttle-type bus to get us from the border crossing to the regular taxi stand a half mile away. It was all quite confusing.
When we were dropped at the taxi stand, we were swarmed and a tall youngish driver dragged us off to his taxi, physically. He was pretty menacing toward the other drivers and got pretty angry when we started following someone else. It was scary and I felt resentful that I was being bullied but was still too frightened to make a stand for the sake of not being bullied. Once our bags were safely in his trunk, he relaxed and we agreed to wait for a few other travelers to make the ride cheaper. So we got soup at the cafe nearby with him and a few other drivers. After soup, he passed us off on someone else he knew that was going to Almaty and we finally got on our way.
The border crossing took 6 hrs. We probably only crossed a couple of miles. Then the ride to Almaty took another 4 or 5 hours, landing us there just after dinner, in a raggedy-but-cheap, old, soviet-style hostel. I rate it as the absolute worst border crossing ever. But the next two were pretty trying as well.
Visas in hand, we were ready to enter Kazakhstan. From Urumqi, we took an overnight bus to one of the border towns. There is a train from Urumqi to Almaty (the once-capital of Kazakhstan and a large city on the South-Eastern side of the country). We arrived in this tiny, dusty Chinese border town Sunday morning to find out that the border is closed on Sundays. So we drove around with our taxi driver, looking for a place to stay. He would report the price of a suggested place and always, I would answer, we need something cheaper, cheaper. Finally, he said, I know a place, and drove to the outskirts of town along the main (half dirt) highway. Turned out to be his house. He explained that a Uzbekistani man was also staying at his house that night and he could take all of us to the border tomorrow. The price would include our meals. He and his wife (they were both Kazakhs who had been raised in China and were both teachers) would take care of us.
Their house was a series of four rooms arranged linearly with a glass covered hallway along one side that let in a lot of light. The sleeping rooms had raised floors so that the entry was a bit lower, intended to be a place to step out of your shoes. The raised floors were covered in rugs and had low tables. Along the walls were stacks of bedding to be rolled out in the evening. The glass hallway faced the yard which may be a garden in the later spring but still seemed to be dormant. In the corner of the yard was the outhouse which included a box of loose school papers with childrens drawings on them to be used for toilet paper.
We spent the day playing cards quietly and went on a walk in the late afternoon because the house began to feel confining. The taxi man was out all day, working, and his wife was sweet but busy with her own tasks so we were left alone.
In the evening we ate and tried to chat. The taxi man and his wife were able to speak Uighur, I think, which is the local minority language and is similar to Uzbek so they could speak to their other guest. They could then speak to me in Chinese. So we were able to gather that the Uzbek man had been in China on business and learned about our hosts' situation as Chinese citizens.
The next morning, we finally made it to the border. We had no idea what an ordeal we were facing. Airports are extremely efficient border crossings because there is a lot of money involved in keeping the travelers moving on those flights. Rich people cross borders that way and they don't want to wait. Trains are also usually orderly and fairly quick. Walking across the India-Nepal border was fine, it was even lazy. Since there was no line for those walking, it was simple. There was a long line of cargo trucks but that didn't conflict with our crossing.
The China-Kazakhstan border crossing was hell. First there was a mass of people waiting (in no real line) outside the gate into the Chinese side. People were carrying large boxes over their heads that contained rice cookers, tvs, rc cars, and fans. This was also the first time I was seeing white people again. It took me a while to realize they were all Russians. I was also shocked to be seeing women in black leather with scarves in their hair, gold front teeth, and a black eye.
After the first gate into the Chinese border, there was a crush to get your stuff through the x-ray machine. Next was a rush to get on shuttle buses that drove the mile distance between the border processing buildings. So on the Kazakh side, we had to go through the same thing; another crush for an x-ray machine, and another round of filing through bottleneck gates. Then, when we had been released into the wide Kazakh expanse with no more need to be crushed together, we had to pay another shuttle-type bus to get us from the border crossing to the regular taxi stand a half mile away. It was all quite confusing.
When we were dropped at the taxi stand, we were swarmed and a tall youngish driver dragged us off to his taxi, physically. He was pretty menacing toward the other drivers and got pretty angry when we started following someone else. It was scary and I felt resentful that I was being bullied but was still too frightened to make a stand for the sake of not being bullied. Once our bags were safely in his trunk, he relaxed and we agreed to wait for a few other travelers to make the ride cheaper. So we got soup at the cafe nearby with him and a few other drivers. After soup, he passed us off on someone else he knew that was going to Almaty and we finally got on our way.
The border crossing took 6 hrs. We probably only crossed a couple of miles. Then the ride to Almaty took another 4 or 5 hours, landing us there just after dinner, in a raggedy-but-cheap, old, soviet-style hostel. I rate it as the absolute worst border crossing ever. But the next two were pretty trying as well.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Rejected from Eastern Tibet
March 10th is the anniversary of a 1959 Tibetan uprising against Han Chinese Communist forces. This year (2008) many pro-Free Tibet groups are organizing campaigns to redirect some of the Beijing Olympics spotlight onto the Tibet-China tensions. Our original plans had been to cross into Tibet from Nepal but the incongruent red tape in China would've cost us our rare 1-year multiple-entry Chinese visas. They would've canceled these and made us buy 30-day single-entry visas if we wanted to enter through Nepal. So our alternative was to fly to Hong Kong, one of our planned destinations anyway and work our way across China to Tibet instead of vice versa. If we had gone straight into Tibet, we would've arrived only a few days before the riots broke out. We probably would've had our cameras confiscated and been pushed out of the region into the rest of China with only three weeks left on our shortened visas.
Instead, we were traveling to Chengdu, one of the largest cities in Western China (more like the middle of China), from Guilin when the riots began. We spent almost a week in Chengdu, watching the news and inquiring about access to Tibetan areas. Foreigners were banned from the Tibetan Autonomous Zone (which is a single province) but ethnically Tibetan areas extended outside this political boundary into the neighboring provinces, including Sichuan, where Chengdu is located.
After a detour south to visit the 3rd largest Buddha statue in the world, we took a day-long bus ride west to get to the Tibetan areas of Sichuan. Our destination was a town called Kangding. As we started up into the foothills of the mountain ranges that border the Tibetan Plateau, we began seeing long convoys of army trucks. Most of them had soldiers holding their protective shields peeking out of the back. We passed over a hundred of these vehicles. More and more as we got closer to Kangding. A couple hours before nightfall, our bus stopped at the police checkpoint outside of Kangding and the two policeman that came on scanned the passengers and then motioned for Zack and I to get out. We brought along our carry on bags, unsure of what was going on. But when we got out, the bus driver was already pulling our larger packs out of the storage bins underneath so it was obvious we were not going to be allowed to continue with the bus. The officers were wearing their full length green winter coats that make them indistinguishable from soldiers. They brought us into their small gate room and invited us to sit on the cots. None of them spoke a whit of English but made an effort to explain when I asked in Chinese. You wenti ma? The key word in their response was anquan, safety. It wasn't safe for us to go to Kangding, they said.
We had to wait a bit for them to convince a bus that was going away from Kangding to give us a lift down to Luding, a Han Chinese town, where we could stay the night and then tomorrow we would have to go back to Chengdu. So we rode an hour back down the road in an empty bus which stopped for a bit for a wash. There are a lot of places along the roads in China that have the characters for car wash, xi che, spray painted on the wall. We watched the military convoys go by and waved a bit at the young soldiers who were amused and often surprised to see us foreigners this far out and waving at them.
On arrival in Luding, the bus just let us out and kept going. It seemed we were left to our devices to find a room, which was fine by me. There was a fancy hotel nearby but that was too expensive, at least 150 kuai (~$20). I left Zack with the bags for a bit so I could look around faster. Finally, I found a super cheap place that was around the corner from the fancy hotel. I'd been wanting to try one of these places that looked like a residence and was marked only with the characters for "room to rent". The woman running the place was very nice and we arranged to stay there for 20 kuai. Of course, it was the worst room we'd ever been in, but tolerable. There was no way the bed linens were clean, but we had sleeping bags anyway. The windows were cracked and letting in the outside air but, again, the sleeping bags nullified this concern. The toilets were no better than a hole in the ground. If there was running water, we wouldn't have used it anyway. For one night, it was fine. Like sleeping outside but with a basic roof and walls. We did get boiled water in a tall thermos though.
After we had warmed up, processed the recent events, and were contemplating going out to eat dinner before it go too late, the proprietress came back and told me that we needed to move somewhere else and that the police were here. I kept asking for clarification because I wanted to get it straight before we ran into the police again, if that was going to be the case. She told us we had to bring all of our things and gave me back the money for the room. I was confused at first because we were quite happy about finding our cheapest room yet and wanted to stay. But we finally allowed ourselves to be ushered up to street level where a well-dressed middle-aged plainclothes policeman was waiting. He explained that the place we were staying in couldn't host foreigners and led us over to the fancy hotel and insisted that we stay there against my complaints that it was expensive. He insisted that we stay there and leave for Chengdu tomorrow on the morning bus that would leave from this same hotel. We had to fill out 3 copies of hotel registration forms and buy our bus tickets while he waited and watched. Finally, when he was sure we were in the proper hotel and would leave tomorrow, he left and we were able to go next door to get a late dinner before returning to the nicest of rooms we ever stayed in.
Instead, we were traveling to Chengdu, one of the largest cities in Western China (more like the middle of China), from Guilin when the riots began. We spent almost a week in Chengdu, watching the news and inquiring about access to Tibetan areas. Foreigners were banned from the Tibetan Autonomous Zone (which is a single province) but ethnically Tibetan areas extended outside this political boundary into the neighboring provinces, including Sichuan, where Chengdu is located.
After a detour south to visit the 3rd largest Buddha statue in the world, we took a day-long bus ride west to get to the Tibetan areas of Sichuan. Our destination was a town called Kangding. As we started up into the foothills of the mountain ranges that border the Tibetan Plateau, we began seeing long convoys of army trucks. Most of them had soldiers holding their protective shields peeking out of the back. We passed over a hundred of these vehicles. More and more as we got closer to Kangding. A couple hours before nightfall, our bus stopped at the police checkpoint outside of Kangding and the two policeman that came on scanned the passengers and then motioned for Zack and I to get out. We brought along our carry on bags, unsure of what was going on. But when we got out, the bus driver was already pulling our larger packs out of the storage bins underneath so it was obvious we were not going to be allowed to continue with the bus. The officers were wearing their full length green winter coats that make them indistinguishable from soldiers. They brought us into their small gate room and invited us to sit on the cots. None of them spoke a whit of English but made an effort to explain when I asked in Chinese. You wenti ma? The key word in their response was anquan, safety. It wasn't safe for us to go to Kangding, they said.
We had to wait a bit for them to convince a bus that was going away from Kangding to give us a lift down to Luding, a Han Chinese town, where we could stay the night and then tomorrow we would have to go back to Chengdu. So we rode an hour back down the road in an empty bus which stopped for a bit for a wash. There are a lot of places along the roads in China that have the characters for car wash, xi che, spray painted on the wall. We watched the military convoys go by and waved a bit at the young soldiers who were amused and often surprised to see us foreigners this far out and waving at them.
On arrival in Luding, the bus just let us out and kept going. It seemed we were left to our devices to find a room, which was fine by me. There was a fancy hotel nearby but that was too expensive, at least 150 kuai (~$20). I left Zack with the bags for a bit so I could look around faster. Finally, I found a super cheap place that was around the corner from the fancy hotel. I'd been wanting to try one of these places that looked like a residence and was marked only with the characters for "room to rent". The woman running the place was very nice and we arranged to stay there for 20 kuai. Of course, it was the worst room we'd ever been in, but tolerable. There was no way the bed linens were clean, but we had sleeping bags anyway. The windows were cracked and letting in the outside air but, again, the sleeping bags nullified this concern. The toilets were no better than a hole in the ground. If there was running water, we wouldn't have used it anyway. For one night, it was fine. Like sleeping outside but with a basic roof and walls. We did get boiled water in a tall thermos though.
After we had warmed up, processed the recent events, and were contemplating going out to eat dinner before it go too late, the proprietress came back and told me that we needed to move somewhere else and that the police were here. I kept asking for clarification because I wanted to get it straight before we ran into the police again, if that was going to be the case. She told us we had to bring all of our things and gave me back the money for the room. I was confused at first because we were quite happy about finding our cheapest room yet and wanted to stay. But we finally allowed ourselves to be ushered up to street level where a well-dressed middle-aged plainclothes policeman was waiting. He explained that the place we were staying in couldn't host foreigners and led us over to the fancy hotel and insisted that we stay there against my complaints that it was expensive. He insisted that we stay there and leave for Chengdu tomorrow on the morning bus that would leave from this same hotel. We had to fill out 3 copies of hotel registration forms and buy our bus tickets while he waited and watched. Finally, when he was sure we were in the proper hotel and would leave tomorrow, he left and we were able to go next door to get a late dinner before returning to the nicest of rooms we ever stayed in.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Guilin is a little too large for my tastes. We only stayed one night and left the next day for Yangshuo, a smaller town not too far away. The highway between the two is small and has a lot of bicycle traffic between various villages along the way so I saw students riding home from school in their uniforms and a half dozen plump, live brown chickens tied upside down to the back of a scooter. After we arrived in Yangshuo, a man speaking English convinced us to come see his hostel and kept dropping his price until we agreed to stay, 70 RMB per night for both of us. He had said it was an international youth hostel but we realized later that there are a dozen hotels who have named themselves international youth hostels in Yangshuo, we should've kept looking and we might've found the real one. The town is small enough that we are walking between these sharp limestone hills which are more technically described as karst hills. It's quite touristy but I feel like I can get away from the tourism easily so I don't mind.
It's been tiring sometimes trying to communicate in Chinese. I haven't been in Chinese class for 9 months and I haven't been in a Chinese-speaking environment since I studied in Taiwan in the summer of '06. I can make do but my ears are rusty and I am forgetting simple stuff. But slowly, it's coming back to me. I am stressed sometimes because Zaq is relying on me to pass on my faulty understanding of whatever situation we may be in and to order a decent array of dishes at each meal. I'm sure he would prefer to fend for himself. Menu recognition is my top priority.
I am happy to see cats in China, they were rare in India and Nepal. Here, they lounge on sacks of grain in shops and mew for attention or food.
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