beijing begins

is the party over? or is it just beginning...

in shanghai, it was an intensive summer language program. so we only had chinese class, and it was concentrated in 3-hour morning doses, with an easier conversational class thrown in during the afternoon. our afternoon class had no homework and our morning class was pretty light, minus hardcore preparation for the next day's lesson. we had chinese roommates our age, so we weren't required to meet with language partners for tutoring. most afternoons, we played in the city, went to the gym, or relaxed.

... then i was galavanting around western china for three weeks!

NOW, i am settled at BLCU and digging in my heels for a real semester. morning classes are tough, chinese homework is heavy, and we have to meet with graduate student language partners for one hour, three times a week. AND we haven't even started our two english-taught courses on modern chinese history (1979-present) and economy! those will be in the afternoon. it's gonna be a heavy, heeeavy semester.

on the other hand, we have a great group of about 20 students that has already clicked really well. we live in a dorm chock-full of other international students studying chinese, on a gorgeous campus in northwest beijing. we have an amazing director that has already planned a sick trip later this fall to qinghai [in my case, BACK to qinghai, so happy], and a trip outside beijing where we hike back to the city... ON the great wall! so is the party over? or is it just getting beginning?

we shall see. anyways, we've been in beijing for nearly a week. it's been a whirlwind of getting settled, meeting each other, trudging through orientation programming, and fun outings to get to know the city. the main points i take away from this week are:

1) i love my new surroundings, but i can't help but compare to shanghai. BLCU's campus is super open and green, which is great for my running habit and general mental health. but the nearby food options are not as extensive as in shanghai (cry) and i miss my chinese roommate immensely.

2) i LOVE my program-mates. right now i feel slightly isolated from them, because i am the awkward exception that has been here for 3 months already and kind of knows how to get around/can speak chinese in daily settings like restaurants, stores, etc. but that gap will melt away so quickly! and we have already bonded quite well as a group (group karaoke outing saturday night was key, ha)

3) i love my director. han bing is quite impossible to describe, so i won't try too hard. but he is basically an amazing chinese man who has traveled the world, speaks english like an american, married an american woman! and has "connections" EVERYWHERE. he is constantly jacked up on caffeine (ten cups of coffee a day... at least. no lie.) and he says everything in superlatives. a SUPER AMAZING professor, or THE MOST INTERESTING guy ever, or THE BEST chocolate chip pancakes of life. he wrote us a 15 page manual outlining all the food available around our campus.

so lastly, here are a few of this week's highlights:

finally, a picture of in front of the gate of heavenly peace! tiananmen 天安门, which of course represents the entrance to the forbidden city, and opens onto the infamous tiananmen square.


all the girlies on top of tiananmen, overlooking the square :)


a street food vendor at wangfujing proudly displaying the bbq-roasted sheep testicles that four of our boys were about to eat...


and the boys eating them!!! aiiii yaaaaaa

two days in chang'an

chang'an... the old name for xi'an. china's capital for thousands of years, including some the most prosperous ones (think zhou,qin,hang, tang dynasties; cosmopolitan times; terminus of the silk road). at its peak, xian was the largest city in the world, with 4 million people. at any given time, a quarter of that population were foreigner traders. i suppose xian's archaeological sights and museums are the best places in the world to experience, first-hand, china's pride in its ancient glory days. even though it poured rain all 72 hours i was in xian, i managed to see some of the sights... i spent monday at the tomb of han jingdi and had another amazing dinner in the muslim quarter. tuesday, i went to the shaanxi museum and big goose pagoda with a new friend from guangdong.

i woke up on monday without a game plan. but my roomates, ricky (adorable australian backpacker of cantonese descent) and sibelle (quirky but endearing stanford student), had signed up for a ride out to the tomb of han jingdi. on a whim, i decided to join them, because i had read that jingdi was the most underrated sight in xian. this turned out to be true. it turned out to be an underground museum where you literally get to look into the pits, and we practically had the place to ourselves! it's really hard to express how rarely that happens in china. so, ricky sibelle and i bopped around in our funny blue booties, oohing and ahhing at the astonishingly expressive little statues of people and animals, pottery, bones, chariots, etc.

in the afternoon, we came back to the hostel and enjoyed our complimentary coffees in the "traveler cafe." although the rain persisted, i went out for dinner because i refused to leave xian without trying the yangrou paomo. first, they give you a giant bowl and a few slices of yummy flatbread. you break the bread into tiny pieces, return the bowlfull to the server, and they add noodles, stewed lamb, cilantro and all kinds of nummy broth. i enjoyed my paomo while chatting with one of the cute hostesses at this tiny muslim restaurant, who was about my age, and her dad, the chef, who suggested we go on a date after i finished my soup.

in the evening, i chilled with chinese friends i had made at the hostel sunday night. one was visiting from guangdong, another from hubei, and two were local university students who liked to chill at the hostel and basement bar just for the heck of it. hanging around with them was great because it totally surrounded me in the laid-back vibe of xian, plus they helped me make a QQ account! i was in desperate need... since facebook is blocked here, everyone uses a chinese version of AIM or MSN, called QQ to keep in touch. now i am virtually reunited with all the friends i made on my trip and had to leave in shanghai! ... but i have to chat in chinese characters. oy.

on tuesday, my guangdong friend "jesse" (we had chosen his english name at the bar on monday night) took me to the world-renowned shaanxi museum. this place was louder than a chinese restaurant, due to the continuing bad weather and the general nature of chinese museums during the summer. nevertheless, it was an amazing and engaging museum, we stayed for about 3 hours! my favorite exhibits were those displaying items that moved back and forth on the silk road (camel sculptures galore) and the most desirable figures of tang dynasty court women (...fat). in all seriousness, the amount of history and artifacts that the museum contains is truly humbling.

in the afternoon we had lunch at a restaurant with typical xian specialties. i was lucky enough to try roasted cow lungs on skewers... mmm... no... sweet of jesse to treat me though. then we went to the big goose pagoda, xian's most famous architectural landmark. both of us were slightly disappointed by the high entrance fee, cheesy surroundings, and restriction of climbing to the top. but we made up for that with an amazing dinner of hei mi zhou (black sesame rice porridge with sugar) and roujiamo (flatbread with seasoned pulled pork inside). in the evening, jesse and i rushed to the train station to catch my overnight to beijing. we pushed through lines together, he snuck into the station with an old train ticket, and we chatted until we finally had to say goodbye when i boarded the train. sigh... so many amazing new friends on this trip!

the train was a warzone, because the conductors had added some extra cars to accommodate everyone. so there was a car 16, and a car 16+1! highly confusing, people running everywhere, screaming and arguing. but when i finally got settled, i was sitting across from an engaged israeli couple and next to a british chemical engineer. they made great company for the ride; we all talked some and laughed a lot about our experiences in china (and other places) so far. come 1 am, we all passed out on jackets scrunched up on our center table. then poof, at 7:30 am we arrived at beijing west train station, said goodbye, and foggily moved on to our next destinations.

for me, that was BLCU! beijing language and culture university, or beijing yu yan daxue 北京语言大学。luckily for me, the train from xian was packed with other students that had to get to haidian district to start school too. i followed the masses and befriended one particular student, mengyuan, for the bus/subway journey north. 7:30 am is obviously rush hour, so we really had to exert ourselves moving from train to train! but we made it to our respective stops, and even exchanged QQ numbers in between :)

i was enchanted from the moment i walked onto the BLCU campus. i can't wait to post pictures soon. i can already feel myself loving it here... even though i miss my shanghai classmates and ESPECIALLY sue :( :( :( anyway i literally screamed with delight when i saw my clean little apartment, luggage delivered safely from shanghai, shower, and washing machine. from 9 am to noon i blissfully unpacked, settled, showered, and did my laundry (i had been wearing my carefully calculated LAST clean shirt on the train). around noon, my classmates began to arrive, and the rest is ancient history!

xian, finally

i'm eating breakfast at my hostel in xian and realizing that this trip only has 48 more hours of adventure in store!

as usual, i sit down to write and have no idea where to start. i suppose the last 3 days can be summed up in a variety of UPs and DOWNs.

UP: thursday, my last day in lhasa. antonio came along with me and dikri to the drepung monastery and neighboring nechung monastery (she brought another guide friend so we could all go together.. angel!) drepung was magical, tucked into the mountains rising up around lhasa. the guides loved antonio and fed him fed him outrageous amounts of delicious tibetan noodles at the little monastery restaurant for lunch.



in the afternoon, i split off and went to the tibet museum, which is free (yay), has amazing tibetan thankgas (yay), and tons of CCP propaganda (ouch). in the evening, antonio and i had dinner on the roof of one of the buildings on the barkhor, which was an excellent way to commemorate the ending of our trip. then, i went SHOPPING in the world's most amazing marketplace...barkhor square. i had been saving my cash till my last day to make sure i'd have a reasonable amount for the rest of the trip, but scarves, prayer flags, jewelry, and GIFTS (ahem, readers) are finally mine :)

DOWN: leaving lhasa on friday morning at 7:45 am and waiting in the rain through 2 PLA check points. ok... this isn't really a down, because i was pumped to finally ride the legendary qinghai-tibet railway. my hard sleeper was comfy-cozy, i loved the families that i shared my cabin with. they treated me like their own... in 24 hours i was never hungry, thirsty, bored, or confused by the quickly-spoken announcements. the way that chinese people will randomly take you in is completely unique.



DOWWWWWN: arriving in xining and finding no tickets to continue to xian. i was about to cry, when...

UP: a couple who lives in xining, that antonio and i met on the beach at nam-sto lake, swooped in, picked me up at the train station, and promised me a day of fun in xining and a ticket to xian by the evening (through a "connection" at the train station, obviously). it seemed to good to be true, but just like that, we were off! we had a sumptuous breakfast of fresh soymilk, jiaozi, and chinese donuts at a place near their house, then dropped off my stuff and went out to the famous kumbum monastery, 30 km outside xining. i was overjoyed to be back at a monastery...the sounds and sights made me feel like i hadn't even left lhasa. because i was american and spoke chinese, one monk took us to see some private chapels that hong and liu hadn't even been to before! chinese people are really into the idea of fate... at this point we were all convinced that fate had brought me to xining, brought us to the chapels, and of course allowed us to see each other again!



in the afternoon, we had lunch at KFC (a weekend treat), and then went to xining people's park (basically their version of disneyland). we spent the whole afternoon playing on bumper cars, carrousels, peddle boats, etc. some of their friends met up and joined us too. finally, we had dinner in the muslim quarter of xining. the best roast lamb skewers and mian pian soup i have ever eaten... plus i tried lamb feet for the first time! aiya.


DOWN: getting on the overnight train to xian at 9 pm that night (13 hours, hard seat ticket. bleh!). i cried when i said goodbye to hong and liu, no joke. we have a connection! i don't know how else to explain. liu says it's because qingdao (shandong province) is both of our ancestral homes. who knows, but i regard meeting them as one of the luckiest, most wonderful things that has ever happened to me.

DOWN: spending the majority of my first day in xian (1) dehabilitated by exhaustion (2) on the phone with the unbelievably unhelpful bank of america trying to get my ATM card back. refer to chengdu entry... this matter is still not resolved and driving me crazy.

UP: visiting the great mosque in the evening, when i had finally regained my strength. a really cool mixture of middle eastern and chinese influences... plus i was around at 5 pm when everyone was gathering to pray. excellent. also ate in the muslim quarter for dinner... the famous xian "xiaochi" or snacks! mutton breaded in fried wheat and butter, sesame and chili cold noodles, and peanut cakes for dessert... all street side. amazing.


a free carlsberg draught from the hotel (1 per night!) when i finally got off the phone with BOA was also a welcome treat. comraderie with various chinese and european travelers also put a positive cap on the night :)



must run to the tombs now! woooo! for now... certainly on the up

namsto and casablanca

lots of people write to calm themselves, and tonight i am one of those people. last time i skyped with mom and dad, dad joked that lhasa is the casablanca of asia. once you get there, you can't get out. two days ago, that was funny. but as my journey out of lhasa and across several provinces to xian approaches… the joke is not so funny!

weeks and weeks ago, the agent that attained my permit, guide, and housing in tibet (you are forced to buy all these things together) offered to help me get a ticket out of lhasa for the end of my trip. because i didn't get to take the train up, and the scenery is legendary, i decided to take the train down. conveniently, the train from lhasa to beijing stops in xian, so i asked for this type of ticket.

when i arrived this week, the agent had no idea i wanted a ticket. the best he could offer was a ticket to xining (about 2/3 of the way to xian). i had to take what i could get, but this means that tomorrow morning i am getting up at 5 am to brave the masses and TRY to purchase another ticket, from xining to xian. anyone who has seen a chinese train station at opening time will seriously question my sanity now. but 没有办法。。。after 27 hours on the train from lhasa to xining, i REFUSE to get stuck in qinghai. plus, it's another 12 hours to xian :(

ok, so i'm pretty stressed about that right now, but i promise the last 48 hours were a blast. last time writing, i left off with my crazy quest to make it to nam-sto lake, one of the biggest, and certainly the highest lakes in china. it's sacred to tibetans and famous to everyone else because the water is a gorgeous, translucent turquoise color… i had to see it for myself!

of course, when i told the travel agency about my desire to go, they said i could hire a private land cruiser for me and my guide, and i would pay 2000 RMB roundtrip. uh-huh. so i told them i would join another group tour and pay something reasonable like 300 RMB (i had heard this was possible from another agency's guide). at first, my agency refused to hand over my permit, because it was "against the rules." how much it is "against the rules" and how much it is "extremely profitable" to hold one's permit hostage… i do not know. anyways, i eventually got it and ran off to join another group for the two-day journey.

what the other tibetan guide DID NOT tell me, is that he was going to sneak me in with a chinese tour group, because technically it is illegal for foreigners to go to nam-sto. i would sit in the back of the car, pretend i lost my passport in lhasa if any authority asked, and speak only chinese. the chinese agency felt confident that i looked chinese enough to pass the glances at the checkpoints. as promised, it would be 300 RMB roundtrip and for housing at the lake… less that 45 USD. they even reassured me that they had snuck three taiwanese girls through that day!

the whole proposition was at once hilarious, terrifying, and intriguing. i knew that the risk to the chinese company was much greater than the risk to me. if i was stopped, i would beg ignorance, while the company could do no such thing. but when i thought about how much money i would pay NOT to come into contact with PLA checkpoint soldiers in tibet… i knew that this was 100% not an option! so i decided to (1) not go, or (2) seek out other foreigners who had ideas.

turns out, a foreigner found me. the chinese agency gave him my cell phone number when they turned him down, because he is chilean and has no chance of faking chinese identity! his name is antonio… he's studying abroad at the university of nanjing, and also traveling independently in tibet right now. long story short, antonio and i met up, found an agency that would take both of us, and were set! this agency was so nonchalant about the checkpoints that we could not help but be reassured. we also watched as 5 foreigners boarded one of their buses out of town that night, while PLA soldiers casually stood by on their watch. like i said… this is the craziest place i've ever been.

so as you can see, getting a ticket to namsto was truly half the adventure. the other half, i will have to skim over because 5 am is drawing near. we boarded our minivan at 2 pm yesterday… a vehicle that should have seated 8 passengers was somehow packed with 11. antonio and i turned out to the be the only non-chinese. at first, they joked and nervously poked fun at us, but we were fast friends by the end of the 4 hour ride. in the evening, we walked by the lake and hiked up nearby hills (strewn with thousands of colorful prayer flags) for views of the sunset. in the morning, it was pouring, so we all stayed in bed until the minute the driver called us out to go.





however amazing the lake was, our 9 chinese companions were truly the highlight of the trip. from begging us to belt lady gaga/shakira songs in the car, pumping oxygen into each others' noses for the 2000+ elevation ABOVE lhasa, paying to ride on yaks, teasing the driver, snapping 30 photographs a minute with outrageously expensive cameras, bargaining for an amazing dinner in the middle of nowhere, acquiring a ridiculous housing rate of 25 RMB per bed, and screaming like little kids in the middle of the night…. i am certain i will never forget any of them. antonio and i had a blast and we were so happy to be accepted into the crew. plus, the boys AND the girls were all much friendlier when they discovered that we were not a couple, and we had only met the day before ;)

so that was nam-sto. when we got back today, i was exhausted and didn't do much of anything, except buy provisions for what is shaping up to be a 3-day train journey this weekend. i also did some recovering, as i believe nam-sto is the highest i have ever been… 5,100 meters or almost 17,000 feet. tomorrow, i will go to the train station first thing, and hopefully be back in time to meet dikri and antonio to go to drepung monastery, another of the three largest in tibet. tomorrow is also the day to do all my shopping! because friday morning at 7:45 am… i'm out of here. oh god.

life in lhasa

yay! i have two full days in lhasa to tell you about. let me preface by saying… this is the craziest place i have ever been. these last 48 hours have been more action-packed than i could have imagined. many ups, a few downs, but altogether just the adventure i signed up for. i'll try to stick to chronological order for sanity's sake!

sunday

woke up from my worst night of sleep in a long, long time. due to a typical case of altitude sickness, my head ached and i felt nauseous all night, plus i woke up constantly thanks to the 3 liters of water that acclimating people are supposed to drink! my roommate in the snowland hostel was really encouraging, she said everyone's first night was that way and not to worry. i was actually thrilled to start my day to the sound of the garbage truck that passes playing "happy birthday" SO loud every morning at 7:30 am.

i met up with dikri, my (required) guide at 9:30. we first wandered over to the barkhor, the streets that form a circle around the jokhang temple, lhasa's most sacred destination. all day, every day (but especially in the early morning), hundreds of traditionally-dressed tibetan pilgrims walk clockwise around the temple in a kora. they sing, chant scriptures, spin prayer wheels, shake beads, and push their children along with them. pilgrims also gather to prostrate in front of the temple for their wrong-doings.


standing from a distance or joining the current both make for one amazing people-watching experience. we then spent some time inside the temple. the main level is dark, incense heavy, and lit by yak butter offering lamps. the top two levels have amazing views of lhasa and the potala palace.


from there we walked across town to norbulinka, the dalai lama's summer palace, via the potala winter palace. at potala, lhasa's most famous site, we had to reserve tickets to visit the next day. entrance is highly regulated… more on that later. norbulinka was more like a huge park with a few pavilions, temples, and the dalai lama's living quarters. it was a special day to visit because it was the last day of the yogurt festival, so tons of tibetan families were out visiting, picnicking, eating yogurt, drinking barley beer, and playing music with their families.


by lunch time, i was feeling record-awful but trying not to show it. the altitude made me completely lose my appetite, but dikri said i would feel better once we had eaten. of course she was right. we had yak-meat and vegetables wrapped in flat bread with tibetan butter tea. after, i felt well enough to visit old lhasa's only nunnery, and peek through the muslim quarter. when i got back to my hostel i promptly passed out for an hour.

in the evening i made it out for a simple dinner and then to the summit coffee shop- the unofficial gathering place of foreigners in lhasa. i met some really nice french, american, and polish people who i have had a few meals with since. always a comfort to spend some time with fellow travelers.

monday

i had paid my dues and the 48 hours of altitude sickness had passed. i cannot describe how happy i felt to wake up in such a state. a few tricks from fellow travelers had helped: no showering, grinding aspirin into expresso (1 in the morning and 1 and lunch), and continuing to drink at least 2 liters of water a day.

i didn't have to meet up with dikri until 10:30, so i headed out to the barkhor around 8:30 and completed a kora around the jokhang with that morning's pilgrims… just for kicks. i was disheartened to see a few tibetans randomly stopped and asked for their ID papers by PLA soldiers, but that's the world we live in. after my 15 minute circle, i started poking around backstreets to look for the traditional tibetan breakfast that dikri had recommended: barley noodles in broth and sweetened, yak milk tea. i peeked into a tiny place that only had a tibetan family and some friends sitting inside, and felt so lucky to be invited in to sit on a couch next to the oldest two ladies. i asked for whatever everyone else was having, and then tried to eat inconspicuously while the ladies told stories and everyone laughed and ate and blew their noses from the chili we put in our noodles :)

my morning at potala with dikri was indescribable. the palace has over 1,000 rooms, but visitors can only go through a handful. they stamp your ticket with the time when you enter and if you do not exit within an hour, they take away your tibet permit!!! the security is airport-level and the admission is sky-high, but it is all worth it. i was almost glad photography was prohibited, because i didn't want to waste a minute with my eye behind the lense. every new room left me speechless… incredible textiles, solid gold statues, coral, jade, pearls, turquoise, mandalas, thrones, you name it. by far my favorite thing i have visited here.



we had a simple yogurt/nuts lunch in the park and watched tibetan opera being performed for the festival. then we went to sera monastery, just 15 minutes out of town. sera is one of tibet's three largest, "pillar" monasteries… at one point it had 6,000 monks. it was a great day to visit because the younger monks were being examined by their teachers in the assembly hall. this was a surprisingly noisy and violent affair… so much fun to watch! but outside the hall, the monastery was peaceful, quiet, all built into the mountainside that rises out of lhasa's urban area.



when we got back into town, dikri took me to her agency to fight with her boss over (1) wrestling my permit out of his hands so i could go to nam-sto lake with a group today, about 4 hours out of lhasa, and (2) paying a ridiculous service fee for a train ticket with the WRONG destination on friday! but train tickets are impossible to come by here so i had to take it. ah! my time at the internet cafe is running short so maybe i can detail this story later, as well as my quest to get to nam-sto today (i am going! but i spent 4-10 pm yesterday running all over town with a chilean student, a tibetan guide, a crazy chinese travel agency, and chinese international travel services). perhaps more on these shenanigans later, i have to go pack an overnight bag to nam-sto and then i might be back. love from lhasa :) rooftop of the world!

西藏

where do i even begin. the people, places, colors, smells... the journey here, the people i've met, the piercing headache... i want to record it all but my brain might explode.

i'll be honest, when i got in the cab to the airport at 4:30 this morning, i was stepping right back out of my comfort zone. i was nervous to be alone again, after having the company of estella's family, tenpa, and various new friends at the traffic hotel in chengdu. my fears were compounded by nonstop lightning and thunder on the way to the airport, being the only foreigner at my gate, having my tibet permit cross checked and my baggage unpacked, and observing that half of the other passengers were uniformed people's liberation army soldiers.

once i was on the plane, everything turned around. the girl next to me was a super-friendly little newlywed, meeting her husband up in lhasa. it was her first time going as well. as has often happened to me here, she took it upon herself to make sure i had everything i needed, could communicate with the flight attendants, and got my baggage when we arrived. lots of my foreign peers have experienced the same thing. some chinese people will yell in your face and wave you away, but others will treat you like their own child. i suppose it's the same in america. we were both so excited when rugged, snowy peaks began to pop through the clouds as we approached lhasa.


when we landed, i was dragged on to the airport bus to fill the last seat... the one where the tour guide usually sits, in the very front! awkward. apparently the people behind me thought it was funny too, because they all started joking back at forth, "look at the foreign girl! she's so confused! where are her friends! where do you think that one is from?" when i turned around and expressed recognition, the ringleader exclaimed, "你听得懂？" or "you understand?". i said that i did, and i wished they would not talk about me like that!

i have debated this approach a couple times before, because i know that chinese people don't necessarily mean to offend foreigners when they single them out or talk about them. it's literally the normal reaction here. children point and say 外国人 "foreigner" from the time they can talk! i feel like we certainly don't do that in america, or at least do it very subtly. anyway, once this crowd discovered i could speak chinese and was half chinese, they were even more fascinated and we became fast friends. they gave me gum for the altitude, wanted to see pictures of my family, and made sure i had contacts in lhasa so i would be safe. certainly not the direction i was expecting the conversation to go in! a pleasant surprise.

oh dear. i'm sorry i haven't even gotten to the city yet. well my tibetan guide, dikri, met me at the bus station and took me to the snowland hostel. she is adorable... i am really excited that i'll be traveling around with another girl :) she informed me of two things i already knew... (1) i can't go to any point of interest without a guide, and (2) do not photograph the PLA soldiers. she helped me get set up at the hostel and we agreed to meet at 9:30 tomorrow to begin touring.



snowland is the same price as traffic hotel for a dorm bed, but not nearly as cushy (uhhh the picture makes it look a lot nicer than it is!). in light of lhasa's isolation, i wasn't surprised. i spent the morning doing my laundry in a metal basin with the tibetan girls that wash the sheets, and then hang drying it on the balcony. the sun here is so strong... they will be dry by the time i go back. while doing laundry, i befriended a hyper, middle-aged chinese lady from guangdong who teaches english but is traveling with her friends right now. they road-tripped here from guangdong... some crazy ladies! she invited me to eat lunch with her buddy and look around the barkhor shopping square with her when we were finished... perfect :) she took me to the stalls where she has gotten good deals and introduced me to the shop keepers so they'd give me equal prices when i came shopping later this week.


after we parted ways, i wandered around a little, then came to the summit cafe to do all my catching up and relax. so far, the best part about being here is that i really feel like i am in tibet. that may sound silly, but between all the chinese tour groups and hordes of foreigners... i wasn't sure i was going to see a tibetan person in lhasa! but the culture is everywhere and you just soak it up. you see lots of older pilgrims in stunning traditional dress, accompanied by their children in more modern clothing. the highlight of my day was a ancient tibetan woman grabbing my arm to stop me from tripping over a bicycle as i snapped a picture... then sticking her tongue out joyfully as i thanked her and she waddled away. michelle sans explained to me before i left, it's a disappearing gesture that women here used to make all the time! i feel so intrusive taking frontal photographs of people just because they are natively dressed, but maybe i'll get a few sneaky ones this week.



i'm here!!!

不好意思！

buhao yisi = embarrassed. in chinese it often takes the place of "sorry" or "excuse me," for example if you step on someone's foot or run into them on the street. but it can also mean straight-up embarrassed... which is what i was on thursday morning (and still am). now, the lucky viewers at home get to hear why, and how i have attempted to bounce back over the last three days!

as you might know, my plan on thursday morning was to catch the first bus from chengdu to e'mei shan, about 3 hours away. i packed up all my things, checked out of my room (leaving my main luggage at the hostel) and went off to the bus station with a night's worth of things. after buying my ticket, i went to the ATM to stock up for my trip. ahhh you can guess from here. as i was preoccupied putting the withdrawn money into my backpack, the man behind me in line mauled right by me, swiped my card from the machine, and ran. i will spare you the the details of (1) my freak-out, (2) the lessons i learned from this incident, which is all i was able to think about for ~48 hours, and (3) my quest all over the city to secure enough cash for the rest of my trip, using only chinese. INSTEAD, i will stick to some of the positives that occurred thursday.

first and foremost, i was in a big city where i already knew my way around and could handle the situation. while i waited for banks to do various things, i got to poke around chengdu's downtown shopping area (even if that was sadly ironic), visit the giant mao statue in tianfu square, and have some authentic mapo dofu on some backstreet.

second, i had plans to meet up with tenpa for dinner again. something resembling a good friend was exactly what i needed. we went to his friend's restaurant for indian food and then did some cheering-up at a lhasa bar with live tibetan music. i got to sample lhasa "rooftop of the world" beer and tibetan barley beer, which were both tasty, even if i wasn't exactly in the mood.

third, tenpa convinced me to confront my fears of the bus station and trips to sichuan mountains by deciding that we would go to qingcheng shan 青成山 on friday. i agreed; i was still dying to get out of the city and have a day hiking. so on friday i set my alarm for 6 am again and went for it.

qingcheng shan was quite an adventure in itself. tenpa hinted that he wanted to take the cable car up. i politely said that i would be climbing... i had some serious steam to blow! so we began 3 hours of steps to the top, accompanied by all of china's men, women, children, and senior citizens. i saw this phenomenon on the great wall and i still can't get over it. girls my age in 4 inch heels, little old men that must be over 70, and toddlers that can barely walk. people that you would never see hiking in the US... going at it!

that part was amusing; but walking among old, thin

construction workers who trembled as they carry dozens of pounds of tiles and brick up the mountain was not. apparently, qingcheng shan is still being rebuilt after earthquakes severely damaged all the daoist shrines. these men looked so miserable and so obviously overworked that even chinese people were quieted and would ask them hopefully how much money they would earn to get to the top. 30 kuai... 4 USD.

our climb was also interrupted by a landslide! it literally happened just in front of us on the trail, gallons of rock and mud slid down and covered a section of the stairs. so we waited 45 minutes for men with shovels to clear it, because we were so close and wanted to get to the top! the scene as everyone piled up on the trail and waited was terribly interesting... i wasn't bored in the least. donkeys, little kids, monkeys, whatever. of course, when we finally bypassed the slide, (1) the top of the mountain was closed and (2) the cable car was broken.

so then we walked back down.

5 hours on qingcheng shan was a little more than i had signed up for :) but i admit, all the mud and sweat was exactly what i needed. the fact that it was half the price of going to e'mei shan mediated my guilt, too. when i got home, i had the most glorious shower ever, and then i treated tenpa for mexican food (i think i am getting evangelical with the stuff) and he treated for massages at a place where prime minister wen jiabao went when he was in chengdu! so cool. only in china would the price tags on those two items basically even out.

and now..... i am in lhasa!!! prepare for saturday blog post #2.

"perfect city"

walking into your room just as it starts to pour is probably one of the best feelings ever. that's what i just did… it's 8 pm and i just walked 3 kilometers or so from the most wonderful dinner. that was plenty of time for it to start raining, but i'm glad it held off till now!

i will get to dinner later. today began with a luxurious sleep-in till 9 am. by the time i got up, the british girl was long gone and the japanese guy was about to head to the airport. so sad! love him.

greece and i chilled and had coffee (mine, starbucks via instant) and macadamia nuts (his, all the way from the home country) for breakfast. we bashed chinese people for not appreciating coffee… good to bond with the europeans every once in a while. i also went down to the common room to check my email and such. by 10 i was out the door to the "dufu thatched cottage," a replica of a tang dynasty sage/poet's modest home in chengdu. it seems that the attraction is neither the cottage, nor the poetry. cottage is tiny and not very informative, poetry is sort of on display but not that accessible to english speakers. the main attraction is the gorgeous gardens, pavilions, lakes, and pagodas surrounding.

from dufu, they drive you to the wuhou temple for free if you buy your ticket there. score! in the car, i met a really nice couple that spoke english and chinese (the guy was from chengdu, girl was from NYC). when we arrived at wuhou, i split off for lunch… best part of the day. i got a little lost in the backstreets near wuhou, but avoiding the overpriced/so-so food next to the tourist attractions is usually worthwhile. today was no different: i ducked into a random little place and asked for jiaozi and a bowl of whatever else was good. the jiaozi were served in mal-la tang (mouth numbing hot sauce) just like everything else in sichuan province is. the other dish was a dessert item… a soup of sticky rice dumplings with sugary peanut, cinnamon, and black sesame filling. seriously, the fuwuyuan could have known me all my life to suggest such a thing. altogether 8 kuai… the price of one skewer next to wuhou!

i spent an hour or so looking around the temple after lunch, but it was sort of disappointing. the highlights were actually the bands of japanese tourists and chinese tourists making funny faces with the "relic" statues. so, i moved on to my secondary plan, which involved sitting, drinking tea, and reading. i found a taro milk tea, snuck into a starbucks back porch (oops, need to make it to a real chengdu tea house at some point) and opened up my current read, patrick french's "tibet tibet." our director michelle gave it to me! it's great, if not a little depressing/frightening (what history of china is not depressing?). later, i gained the confidence to actually go inside starbucks, and sat down on a couch with a giant american guy from phoenix. he turned out to be a teacher at a foreign-language school in chengdu - very friendly and tons of tips for lhasa. later we were joined by a chinese couple that was also really nice. our conversation spanned education in the usa v. china, beijing and lhasa relations, chengdu life v. that of other cities in china, the ipad… haha etc. the husband even suggested that i fake chinese citizenship so i don't need to bother with a permit to tibet! oh dear. the chinese couple wants to have dinner on friday night when i get back from e'mei shan. maybe…

ah yes, on the topic of dinner. it was about 4 when i left starbucks to go to the chinese herbal medicine shop, where estella's aunt sent me to buy altitude sickness remedy for my trip to tibet. she had also told me to look around that area because it is chengdu's tibetan quarter (food, shops, tibetan community). tenpa, the man who obtained my tibet permit and guide, had said yesterday that if i came around the tibetan quarter, i should give him a call. so i did! in no time, we met up again, and agreed that i should have my first tibetan meal at his friend's restaurant nearby.

dinner was just so enjoyable! tenpa has a really interesting life story, and because he has worked in tourism for so long, he has friends all over the world. like many tibetan families, his is somewhat displaced. he was born in lhasa, raised in india from 4 to 19 years old, then came to chengdu. he therefore speaks tibetan, hindi, english, and a little mandarin. his two brothers live in san francisco and run a pizza shop in berkeley (chicago zachary pizza - do any of my berk peeps know it?!). his sister lives somewhere else too - i don't remember. we talked about how he loves bollywood movies, can cook nepalese food, hates tokyo and thinks that japanese people are very unhappy, and doesn't believe you can convert religions if you were raised in one (but, he thinks it's great that many agnostic americans are attracted to tibetan buddhism. he has taken tour groups from san francisco to lhasa who can read sanskrit and pray better than some monks!). anyway, i admire tenpa because he is so calm, easy going, and soft spoken, but still so interesting to talk to. i felt really hyper and wound-up compared to him… and i had been reading and sipping tea all afternoon! i guess he is one example of why people speak so highly of tibetans and their uniqueness.

their food must be another reason! we began with butter tea, which i had heard of, but didn't really believe until i saw it. tea- mixed with yak butter, milk, and salt. who's idea was that?! either way, it's great, but very unusual at first. i can imagine it being perfect when you are frozen and dried out on a windy, desolate plateau. but in chengdu's stifling heat, maybe not so much. next, sour yak yogurt, with as much sugar mixed in as you like. yummy. then, a rich beef/tomato broth with handmade flat noodles and a little kick. finally, the famous "momo!" dumplings stuffed with delicious yak meat. if you are into lamb and other such meats… you will basically die.

back at the ranch, i have met one of my new roomies (a cute korean girl from seoul who just got back from the jiuzhaigou waterfalls). the other two have their things scattered around but i haven't met them yet. books indicate english speakers - yay. now i will go downstairs and try to get some help planning my hike to the top of e'mei shan tomorrow thru friday. i am almost sad at the prospect of leaving chengdu for 48 hours! because on friday i leave for lhasa… all too soon. i am really loving it here; chengdu means "perfect city" after all. till friday ;)

panda panda

wahhh i am 累死了！tired to death. but i need to write or else i will not do it tomorrow. this morning i got up at 7 am to catch the first bus to the CHENGDU GIANT PANDA RESEARCH CENTER... probably chengdu's most famous attraction. they have approximately 200 pandas and have successfully bred 190 captivity since they opened. actually, there's a hilarious 15 minute video that you can watch before you explore the panda enclosures, awkwardly narrating all the dirty details about how difficult it is to get pandas to mate. favorite scenes include "SUCCESSFUL COPULATION" with video of pandas getting down, versus "UNSUCCESSFUL" with video of a female panda screaming and beating a male into the corner of a containment cage. oy vey.


i spent a good 2.5 hours wandering around the panda center. thanks to tripadvisor and LP, i arrived at feeding time and got to see lots of pandas eating lots of bamboo and making those SUPER CUTE LITTLE NOISES that they maaaake (pathetic panda? youtube it. me incarnated as an animal). also saw red pandas, 小熊猫, "little bear cats." giant pandas are "big bear cats." i love the red pandas because they actually are a lot like cats. i have super cute pictures of them hanging asleep in trees. to be added when the stupid internet works.

after pandas, i took the bus back into the city. i was aided by a japanese tourist in getting off at wenshu monastery (lots of independent japanese travelers in chengdu! crazay). i was going to leave wenshu out because i know lhasa will be chock full of monasteries, but i am so glad i didn't. it was a huge complex with gorgeous gardens and very active worship centers. i saw all kinds of rituals being performed, monks just hanging around, faithful people paying respects, etc. afterward i had mala liang mian 麻辣凉面 and a snickers. life is good.


got a little lost looking for the bus, but resorted to my usual method. just walk... only problem was that i was maddd dehydrated when i got home! but i had an hour to shower, drink tons of water, and receive my permit to tibet before i went to estella's family's home for dinner :)

this was probably the highlight of my day. there is nothing like being a guest in a chinese home. estella was one of the chinese roommates at fudan. she became one of our best friends, so when she heard i was going to chengdu, of course she fixed me up to meet her aunt, uncle, and grandparents. k yesterday i promised not to take another motorcycle cab... but i couldn't resist. it's dirt cheap, really fun, and the taxis here are impossible! 20 kuai for a 20 minute ride, a great tour of the city, and a charismatic driver that was trash-talking mao the whole time (to my extreme surprise, definitely my first such experience).

estella's aunt is hilarious, so cute and so friendly. her grandparents are adorable; we communicated in signs and laughs because they only speak sichuan dialect. they put on a heavenly, home-made sichuanese feast... candied apricots and peanuts, hong jiang dao (think green beans, but black), mouth numbing hot kelp, spicy marinated chicken, lotus root, eggplant hot peppers and pork, mapo tofu, and winter melon soup.

after dinner, estella's uncle showed me pictures from all his travels around sichuan, the tibetan plateau, and xinjiang. he is an amateur photographer and his photos are stunning. we must have looked for over an hour. now i have a long list of places to visit, too! the 平 family also showered me with little presents... an autographed photography book of tibet, chinese medicinal tea for dehydration, altitude sickness remedy, and a mini watermelon!!! i feel lucky to come into contact with such wonderful people. they even drove me home (in their sienna. shout out, mama)

okay speaking of people, some profiles are in order:

roommate 1: a middle aged japanese man traveling in china on his own. he is interested in tibetan buddhism. probably the best roommate EVER. we communicate in chinese because my japanese and his english are both subpar. he is so cute and clean and quiet and considerate. i want to stay in hostels with only japanese travelers from now on. oh and he loved my panda pics. extra points for him.

roommate 2: a older professional photographer from greece. quite friendly, english is good, we talked in french a little too. hate to generalize about europeans but unfortunately, he smells just soooo bad. it's really fun to watch him and the japanese roomie try to communicate in english.

roommate 3: everyone was sleeping when i got in tonight, but i'm pretty sure she is the random blond brit i saw walking down the street today and recommended this hostel too. such is life!

tenpa travel "agent:" i mentioned i got my tibet permit today. yes, today i finally met the man that has been arranging all my tibet travels, when he delivered it to my hotel and took my cash. i don't know if i can adequately describe my relief. he is a younger, tibetan man that goes between lhasa and chengdu arranging trips. his english is fluent, and he reassured me of all the terms of our agreement. basically, my discomfort stemmed from the fact that our business up to now had been extremely casual. my entire trip to tibet was arranged via text message, broken conversation, and unanswered emails. alas, this is china. no credit card invoices, no travel agency websites to check, no informative emails or friendly phone calls. it can really throw an american for a loop (especially a control freak like me). actually, when tenpa left he even invited me to come to the tibetan quarter of chengdu for dinner tomorrow night, so i could get a little preview of my trip to come :)

WHEW. i wrote too much. tomorrow i will go to the dufu cottage (tang dynasty poet's famous home) and wuhou temple. i will also eat lots more. till then!