Seagulls, Hiphop, and Latkes

All last week the weather was beautiful, which meant that I went for some nice walks.  It also meant that the Siberian Black-headed gulls chose last week to reach the Green Lake Park on their annual migration route south, just in time for me to happen upon them.  What were always considered a nuisance visiting the Jersey shore while growing up, in Kunming seagulls receive a grand welcome.  Their North American cousins may have to swoop down to snatch that piece of Mack’s pizza or Steel’s fudge right out of your hands on the boardwalk, but the seagulls here are hailed by Chinese locals and tourists as honored guests.  Local vendors set up shop right in the park, selling pieces of bread, which locals toss up into the air and onto the water for the gulls to feast upon.  No wonder they still include the relatively small Green Lake on their migration route.  What’s more, statues around the park honor the seagulls—a year-round reminder that they’ll be back each winter.  One statue even depicts an old man covered with the birds and a plaque below, which explains how he came to wait for the birds each year till he died, spent a good deal of his lifesavings buying bread to feed them, and became their lifelong friend.  “They would even come to him when he called them,” it says.  It goes to show you, one country’s lonely crazy person is another country’s local hero.  What can I say?

Last week was also Hanukkah.  The package from my parents significantly delayed by the incompetent Chinese UPS system, I fashioned myself a menorah out of tin foil on a metal tray.  I bought red candles by the Buddhist temple, cut them in half, and lit them each night.  I also hosted a Hanukkah dinner party last Thursday night, and invited 8 friends.  For my first dinner party, I think it went well, although the preparation (and cleanup) was certainly work-intensive.  The menu included a Curried Sweet Potato Soup, Stuffed Mushrooms, Bruschetta, Braised Eggplant (红烧茄子), potato latkes accompanied by homemade applesauce, and a rotisserie chicken.  For dessert, I bought jelly doughnuts and gelt-like chocolates.  The chicken was certainly the most labor-intensive menu item.  I bought a small electric oven last week, and realized that it had a rotisserie built in, inspiring me to give it a shot.  I picked up a chicken at Carrefour, made a spice rub, and let it marinate overnight.  While in the States, the chickens come ready to stick in the oven, this one was far from it.  It included the head, feet, and all the internal organs.  I googled “how to butcher a chicken” (http://butcherachicken.blogspot.com/ if you’re interested), and went at it.  In any case, almost everything came out delicious.  The latkes, which I made the night before, were expectedly a little soggy and the eggplant was too salty, but other than that it was great.  My friends brought some pasta, tofu, and a couple bottles of wine, and it was a good night.

On Saturday, I went to a local hiphop concert with a friend.  The band, called the Yaco Music Union, is composed of a drummer, a guitarist, a bassist, 5 rappers, and a synth/keyboard player.  Most of their songs are in the local dialect (昆明话), and I didn’t understand a lot of it, but it was still an interesting experience.  A large portion of the crowd in the bar was high school students.  At a break in the performance, my friend and I ‘snuck’ (really openly walked) backstage, which turned out to be the inside of a shopping mall.  When they were done their set, we sat and talked with them for a couple hours.  They’re all college students around my age, and a few of them also collaborate on a band called PirateRadio (they were a bit upset about the recent movie of the same name).  They said that Yaco had only been together since June, and they’ve written over 50 songs since then.  Some of the songs are interesting fusions of traditional local and ethnic music with American-inspired rap.  They said they were thinking about writing songs in English, because that seems to be the popular thing to do.  I went on a rant about how with all the up-and-coming Chinese musicians today, and the huge Chinese audience, they should write the music that comes naturally to them in Chinese, eventually defining their own genres as modern Chinese music, instead of merely American-inspired music.

I’m going to Beijing this Wednesday to follow up on some research leads, and to spend Christmas and New Years with friends.  My friend Ben is also flying in from New York City, and I’m sure it will be fun exposing him to China for the first time.  I’m having a few pairs of jeans tailored and my shoes repaired, and can’t wait to have clothes that fit well again.  After Beijing, I’ll be flying back down to Kunming with a friend, and then she and I will spend spend a couple weeks traveling from Kunming south into Laos by land and down into Cambodia, crossing into Thailand, and probably finishing up somewhere in Vietnam before crossing back into China.  I’m excited to travel again and to see friends, and I’ll try to post when I get the opportunity!

[I’ve posted photos from last week, and also a photo tour of my house.]

Dealing With Bureaucracy & Stomach Bugs: My First Field Research Trip

After my trip to EShan (峨山), my research was starting to look a lot more promising.  I was invited to a Yi Ten-Month New Year Festival on Saturday night, and then my professor and I planned on going to Xundian (寻甸) for me to do field research.  Per my advisor’s instructions, I submitted a short report to the FAO (Foreign Affairs Office) at my university, letting them know where I intended to go, when, why, and with whom.  They glanced over the letter, and swiftly replied that it was very unlikely they’d approve my application to do field research, but that they would work with me to revise my project.  I explained how as a linguistic analysis, my project relies on field research, and without it, I wouldn’t have anything to analyze.  They told me they’d consider it, and let me know.  A few days later, they told me they’d approved my application on the condition that Professor Zhang goes with me, but told me to be very careful.  They were apparently very worried about my safety since the area is a Yi and Hui Autonomous County, which has supposedly had some problems with Hui riots (not entirely sure about this).

Saturday night, December 5th, I met my professor and a few graduate students from the Yunnan Nationalities University at a hotel not too far from the campus.  The Ethnic Cultures department was hosting a celebration for the Yi New Year.  There were a few hundred people at the event, eating dinner together and watching a performance.  My professor and I sat in a side room with some of his old friends, so I didn’t get to see the performance, but the singer came in later, toasted us and sang for us as well.  I was served the head of the fish (apparently an honor), and I reluctantly accepted and picked at it.  A couple hours, and many glasses of baijiu, later, I headed home to start getting ready for my field research trip on Monday.

On Sunday, while packing for my trip to Xundian, I got a phone call from my advisor.  He told me that I should meet him at his office the next day to discuss my trip.  I told him we’d planned to leave that morning, but he said we’d have to leave on Tuesday instead.  Apparently, while I had gotten both his approval and the approval of the FAO for my field research trip, the FAO had not personally contacted him or provided him with a letter expressing their approval.  He said that since they were from two different work units, it was important that everyone was on the same page, and he’d rather push it back a day than risk getting on the FAO’s bad side.  So, I stopped packing.

I got phone calls from three different people on Monday afternoon:  my advisor, the FAO, and the professor who was to accompany me to Xundian, all asking me to meet in different places at the same time.  I decided to meet my advisor first, and showed up at his office only to find him not there.  I waited a few minutes, and received a phone call from the FAO, telling me that they were all downstairs waiting for me.  So, I headed downstairs, and we shook hands, exchanged papers, and stamped things for several minutes until it was agreed that I could go, but would have to pay a research affiliation fee.  Bureaucracy is always fun, even more so when it involves Chinese danwei’s (单位—work units).

Since the fan in my computer had been making noise, I’d called Lenovo, and asked them what I could do to get it fixed in China.  They activated my International Warranty Service, and gave me the address of a repair center.  In the morning, before heading to the bus station for my trip to Xundian, I walked my computer over.  The address turned out to be 5 minutes from my apartment, and I figured they could work on my computer while I was gone.  The place was a Lenovo Service Center—the barcode on the bottom of my computer to get the warranty info, and I explained the problem.  Within 5 minutes, one of the techs had taken the computer apart in front of me, removed the fan and confirmed that it was broken and needed to be replaced.  He told me to come back in an hour.  A little surprised by such fast service, I asked him if I could instead come back later that week.  This is the first time I’ve ever had to tell a computer company to take their time fixing my computer, and it was actually quite refreshing to have something here go smoothly for once.

After dropping off my computer, I ran around buying small gifts to give to people for helping me with my research—Marlboro cigarettes for the men and Dove chocolate for children.  Since apparently all of the men down here smoke, it seemed like a good idea.  What’s more, as mentioned in my last post, men often rip off the filters and smoke the tobacco straight through a large bong, which nicer restaurants have on hand.

I don’t know what it is that I ate that day, but on the hour and a half bus ride north to the capital of Xundian, I began to feel very nauseous—not a good thing at the beginning of a research trip.  When we got to the bus station at the capital of Xundian, two of my professor’s old friends (meaning both ‘old friends’ and ‘OLD' friends—they were both very short older men in their late 70s) were there waiting for us.  They said we’d first go to the government offices to introduce ourselves, and then the local government would drive us out to the village.  It’s always interesting walking in smaller cities in China—partly because they’re not as modern as larger cities, and partly because the people there have had very little contact with Caucasians.  Many people do a double-take when they see me, surprised at the presence of a white person in their cities (perhaps they’ve never even seen a white person before), but I think possibly the best reaction I’ve ever seen was that of the little girl who looked straight at me, and then dropped her jaw and widened her eyes so much they seemed like they’d pop right out of her head.

At the government offices, we sat.  And sat.  Drank tea.  And sat.  My professor talked all about his work, and then we drank more tea, and sat some more.  The government official we were meeting with kept bringing in people for us to shake hands with, and presented us each with a thick book all about Xundian County.  Apparently, the car they’d arranged for us to take was having problems.  So, we sat, and after a couple hours, the car was finally fixed, and we were ready to be on our way.  Somehow I got stuck in the back seat between the two old Yi men, unable to take photos out the window.  What I was hoping would be a quick ride out to the villages (I was still fairly nauseous), turned out to be another two hour car ride, past coal power plants, vegetable fields, up hills, and around winding curves.  Outside the city, locals were riding in donkey carts, children were carrying vegetables from the fields back home, and dogs and chickens were rushing out of the way of our SUV.  At one point, a chicken decided to pass right in front of our car, only to let out its final BUKKKAAAAAAAA under our tire, squawking into death.  This raises the question, why did the chicken cross the road (right as we were driving by)?!?!? (sorry)

Our destination turned out to be more of a small town than a village. We were driven right into the government offices there, where we again sat and drank tea.  I told myself that this was all part of the necessary bureaucratic process of doing field research in China, but I was starting to get impatient and a little disheartened that such a large chunk of my short trip was being spent in offices.  I tried to keep up with the conversation, but it was in the local dialect of Chinese, mixed with a spattering of Yi, and I wasn’t having much luck comprehending.  It did seem, however, that the local official did not approve of my being there to do research.  He said we could stay in the apartments attached to the government building, have dinner there, and then have a tour of the area the next morning, but that I couldn’t interview any of the minorities in the area.  My professor and his friends had some words with him, and I sat back and hoped for the best.  They did tell me at one point, to be cautious taking photos.  They said in Chinese, “you can take photos, but this is a poor area—you should only take photos of the good things, not the bad.”  I agreed, thinking I could probably sneak a few shots of something if it was very interesting.

Still not feeling well, I tried to avoid alcohol at dinner, and failed.  Drinking here is a matter of trust and respect; besides, they want to see how well the large American can hold his alcohol.  I finally agreed to drink “a little”, which turned into a full glass of baijiu, and another after that (probably more as well, but I don't remember).  My stomach was not happy, and I was feeling fairly buzzed, and pretty tired.  So, you can imagine my excitement, when after dinner my professor informed me that I would now have three hours to conduct my interviews.  They’d found two speakers of the local dialect to help me go through word lists.  They put me in a small office and let me be with my two language consultants.  I handed them a pack of cigarettes to smoke, set up my recording equipment, and began.  I had done some prep work for the dialect that I wanted to research.  There had been some data collected there in the 80s, and I was hoping to create updated phonemic and tonal illustrations, and to analyze the differences.  I quickly realized, however, that this was not the dialect I had prepared for.  In fact, this was not even the village I had been told I’d be going to.  I continued with the interviews for another couple hours, and they eventually degraded when more people came in to help.  I appreciated the fact that so many people were interested in helping, but it’s difficult to do recordings and differentiate phonemes when there are five people yelling them at you.

That night I was led to the apartments attached to the police offices.  The bathroom had a dirty squatter toilet next to a bathtub covered in hair.  The light was flickering, and the place felt like it might have been used for torture at some point in the recent past.  (I say this jokingly, but you never know.)  It was cold, and I used my sleeping bag on top of the bed to stay warm.  I woke up that night shaking with a fever, and realized my nausea was probably being caused by a bacteria or virus of some sort.

The second day was a bit more interesting.  They took us on a tour of the surrounding villages.  My Yi companions were all intrigued by the large bulls, which evidently cost the equivalent of several thousand US dollars, and are used for bull fights.  The area was poor, but not impoverished.  We walked into the courtyards of some local homes and my professor talked with the local Yi, amused by the differences and similarities in their dialects.  In one home, there was an old dog tied up by a pile of hay.  It had sores all over its body, apparently from gnawing at itself, and was shaking from the pain.  It was a bit sad, and I couldn’t help staring at him for a while.  The Yi owner told me not to go near him.  I thought about animal rights in the States and veterinary care, and it made me realize that our concept of dogs as pets is really very modern.  For thousands of years, and still in villages like these, dogs have been raised for functional purposes—to scare off intruders, herd other animals, and in some cases, for food.

Later that day, we visited a Yi-Chinese Bilingual school.  The kids were all very giggly upon seeing me, and stopped playing basketball to point curiously.  The headmaster of the school showed us artwork done by the children.  They were being taught to make thread out of local plants (possibly cotton?), and then use that thread to sew traditional patterns.  Also, they were given assignments to write in both traditional Yi characters and Chinese characters.  Some of the girls, embarrassed, were forced to dance for us their traditional dances, and we walked around looking in classrooms.  It is encouraging to see a school like this one.  We often hear stories of forced cultural assimilation and language abandonment, but then there are also schools like this one that encourage children to learn Chinese, while maintaining their traditional language and ways of life.

After the school, we headed back to the county capital and went to dinner with a bunch of local officials and professors.  I made some contacts, managed to refuse alcohol, and stayed that night in a real hotel.  Before heading home on the following day, I was introduced to a 50 year old Yi doctor from the capital, who speaks the dialect I am currently investigating.  We talked, and he agreed to help me with my research.  I may go back up to the area and meet with him, or may call him and invite him down to Kunming to help.  The trip ended up being a bit shorter than I had hoped, but it was a good start.  I got a good context to begin my research, made some good contacts, and got several hours of recordings, which will take me quite some time to analyze (there’s a linguists' maxim that says it takes one hour to analyze one minute of recordings).

The weather has been beautiful since I got back.  Seventy and sunny each afternoon.  For all of you stuck in wintery chaos, feel jealous.  (Actually, I miss snow, and I’m a bit jealous, but I’ll be in Beijing for the holidays, and I’m sure I’ll get at least my share of cold temperatures.)  Happy Hanukkah to all!  Also, photos are up.

Yi Festival in EShan (峨山): Dancing, Bongs, & Bees

I went to class for the first time last week—a graduate class titled “Linguistic Field Research Analysis”.  I showed up 10 minutes early just to be safe, and found the class mostly filled, from the third row on back.  I took a seat in the front row all the way on the side by the window so the professor would know that I was there but I wouldn’t be in the center.  By the time the class was about to start, there were only three people in the front two rows:  me and two girls who had come in too late to get seats farther back (they sat behind me in the second row).  I turned around to talk to the girls, but they were intensely preparing for class.

The professor was 10 minutes late, and everyone continued talking while he began.  This class, as it turns out, is a first year graduate class of about 40 students.  Since it is mid-semester already, I expected some interesting discussions about field research or some case studies or something along those lines.  Instead, the professor spent the first hour and a half of the two-hour course individually quizzing each of the students on the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)—a set of symbols and characters used by linguists to represent every phonetic sound and variation in all natural languages—and then he went into a brief discussion about linguistic tones.  While I found the discussion on tones at least somewhat useful, I was still bored throughout the entire class.  What’s more, every time a student made a mistake on the IPA, all of the students laughed, and the professor looked over at me nervously as if he had to prove himself and his class in my presence.  To be perfectly honest, I was more nervous that he was going to ask me to recite the IPA as well!  After class, I chatted with some of the graduate students and then went with the professor to his office.  There, he introduced me to a retired professor Zhang ChunDe (张纯德), who is a Yi member and an expert in the field of Yi studies.  (He has 7 or 8 books published on various aspects of Yi, including their culture, history, religion, writing, and language).

We had brief introductions, and Zhang ChunDe explained that he had been invited by the government of EShan (峨山—the first autonomous county of the Yi People in China) located in YuXi, about two hours south of Kunming, to the first annual Yi Ancestral Cultural Festival starting the next day, Wednesday, 11/25 and going through Friday, 11/27.  He said he’d asked, and I was allowed to join him.  It kind of threw me off at first, since Thursday was Thanksgiving and I had plans, and it was so soon, and I almost said no.  But, I realized after a moment that this type of event is why I’m here, and it was a good opportunity to make contacts and get involved in Yi society, which I shouldn’t pass up.  I thanked him and agreed to go.

He called me the next morning to tell me that we had tickets for a 1:30pm bus, and would meet at the bus station at 1.  I spent a little time packing, arguing with myself about how much clothes to bring for the three day trip, and eventually weeding down my extra bag, deciding I didn’t need to bring my computer and could manage with one pair of pants and a few t-shirts to wear under .  I arrived a little bit early, and waited.   By 1:20, I was starting to get a little bit nervous that I might be in the wrong place.  I called him, and he didn’t pick up.  Fortunately, at 1:28, he came hustling up to the station.  I grabbed his bag for him, and we ran through the station to find the bus.  (I also want to note that despite the fact that I was so proud of myself for bringing so little, he had with him even less, only a small bag, which it turns out was filled with books to give as gifts—no change of clothes.)

We found the bus, and he said that two other professors were supposed to be joining us.  I waited for him on the bus while he ran around looking for them and calling them.  Finally, the other people on the bus and the driver were getting impatient and threatened to leave without him, so I signaled him back, and we figured that they’d have to take the next bus.  A short two hours later, the bus stopped on the side of the highway and informed us that we’d reached our destination.  We got out and found no way to actually get off the highway (if it were just me, I would have just hopped the fence, but he didn’t seem like he had the interest or ability).  So, we walked a ways till we got to the off-ramp, and down around till we came to a toll booth where a line of girls dressed in traditional Yi costume were waiting to welcome guests attending the conference.  A man with a clipboard came up, and there was some handshaking and acknowledgments that we were there for the conference.  He ushered us into a nice SUV and drove us to another location to register.  There, we presented ourselves to another welcoming committee, who looked for our names in a registration book.  At this point, I realized that this festival/conference was much bigger and more serious than I had expected it to be.  Along with about 800 other professors, bureaucrats, and other individuals with interest in Yi studies, my name was also officially listed in the guest book as an “American Visiting Researcher”.  (It also said that I had a PhD—I didn’t correct them.)

They took us to a village about 10 minutes from the center of EShan, because they said the town was too crowded.  The hotel was nice enough.  I got my own room, and the village is known for its hot springs, so the shower water was naturally hot.  This festival, I spent a little time looking through the gift bag.  It contained a nicely sized wheel of Puer tea, a 120 page hardbound photo It was a bit awkward at first, but people were nice enough and seemed curious about my presence there.  Zhang Laoshi introduced me to everyone, and it turned out that he really knew EVERYONE; or, at least everyone knew him.  I was talking to two professors from Beijing on my own, when Zhang Laoshi came over, and they said they had his book on their desk back in Beijing.

Dinner was interesting.  I was very gracious, (though a bit out of my element) and I admit that I still don’t fully understand Chinese toasting culture.  I had never been at an event or dinner like this before, and at first it took me by surprise.  During dinner, people would get up with a bottle of BaiJiu and their glass, and walk around individually toasting specific people, then refilling both glasses in preparation for a later toast.  Making it worse, everyone was speaking very quickly in either really heavily accented Southwest Mandarin or in Yi.  Having communication difficulties and not really knowing my place, I stayed quiet.

After dinner they took us to a sort of opening ceremony.  The term opening ceremony may even be quite appropriate since they stole some of the music from the Olympics, and the event was held in a large outdoor stadium, with over 2 million USD in lighting, sound, fireworks, and other theatrics invested in it.

The next day we got up early for the unveiling of a large statue of Abudumu (阿普笃慕), the ancestor of the Yi people.  Abudumu apparently lived about 2200 years ago, and had 6 sons with 3 wives.  This festival was dedicated to him.  The large statue of him, along with statues of his 6 sons, was built in April or May of this year, but this was the official unveiling.  It was an interesting ceremony.  The Yi people have a rich culture and writing system, which comes from their shamanistic religion, Bimo.  A group of shamans were on hand to “bless” the statues.  There were also horn players, drummers, firecrackers, and a lot of people.

Later in the day we took part in the Yi Cultural and Economic Social Development Conference.  The first speaker was a Yi woman named Wu Xia.  She had obtained a PhD from a university in Hong Kong, and a second PhD from the University of Michigan.  Her presentation was on comparisons between the Yi people and native peoples of North and South America, with a focus on sun calendars.  (The Yi people use a 10-month sun calendar.)  Her talk was very interesting, and one of the only ones that I really understood, since she spoke in fairly clear Putonghua.  Everyone else was speaking with strong accents.

Later that night, we went to the finals of the Yi Flower Drum Dance (花鼓舞) competition.  The Flower Drum Dance is a famous dance of the Yi people, which includes (you guessed it) flowers and drums.  Often, the men dance with flowers while the women dance and play drums, but there are variations.  The competition included 11 teams, a singing performance, and a Guzheng (Chinese harp) performance by 4 young girls.  The dances were interesting and very enjoyable—a few of the teams included fusions between the traditional dance and modern dances such as hip hop and break dancing, but on the whole, I liked the more traditional dances a lot more.

We were originally supposed to go home the next morning, but the event coordinators offered to give us a VIP tour of the region, so we agreed.  They first took us to the YuanTian Bio-energy Development Company, where the president of the company gave us a tour of the hills growing the plants they use to produce bio-diesel and other oils.  It was very foggy out early in the morning, and there wasn’t much to see.  Later, we visited the Yu Lin Quan BaiJiu (Chinese alcohol) factory/brewery (?).  The company has been around for hundreds of years, and it was interesting to tour the facilities.  I was talking with the Vice President of the company, and he offered to let us all taste one of their very high quality baijius, which had been sitting for 20 years.  They poured it right out of the jugs, and it was very strong.  A bit spicy on the tongue with a strong warming feeling—it burned for a few minutes.

Next, we visited a tea mountain famous in the region for its Puer, green, and oolong teas.  We had lunch there, during which there was much drinking and more toasting.  It seems that the Yi tradition is to sing to each other when making a toast.  I was asked to sing an English song, and couldn’t think of anything appropriate, so I sang a song in Hebrew.  Afterwards, went on a tour of the mountain and tea gardens, and then got to taste three of their teas:  a green tea, a roasted green tea, and a Puer tea.  Normally each glass can cost up to $20 USD, but since we were VIP guests, it was of course on the house.  We all drank a lot, and they kept filling up our glasses.

While tasting the teas, the offered me a bong.  In Yunnan, it is customary to smoke a cigarette or straight tobacco through a large bong.  You can see it all over Yunnan, and it really is quite remarkable the first few times you see it.  I politely declined.

Dinner that night was interesting.  I really regret that I didn’t bring my camera.  On the table, there was a dog meat stew, a bowl of chicken heads, and a plate of fried bees.  I have seen bee larvae served in China before, but this was new to me.  It was literally a plate piled high with bees.  They had apparently been lightly breaded and fried quickly.  Many of them were bread-less.  After a bit of encouragement, I stuck a couple in my mouth.  They were fairly crispy, and not bad.  I was told that it’s an expensive dish.  Based on the trouble it must take to get the bees, I’m not surprised.  After eating a few, someone asked me, “you’re not allergic to bees, are you?”.  I said, “hmm… I really hope not!”

Since we’d stayed the extra day, it was decided that we’d go home the next morning.  All in all, it was an amazing trip.  I met a lot of people, learned a lot about the Yi, got VIP treatment, and had a good time.

On Sunday, I went for lunch at Zhang ChunDe’s house.  I showed up at 9am, and we spent three hours in his study reading books and discussing my research.  He lives with his wife, his daughter, and her husband and son.  His other daughter and her family, and two other couples and their children also came for lunch.  I must say, the boys who were around 7 or 8 were quite the小皇帝(litte emperors—spolied).  They wanted what they wanted and wouldn’t listen to their parents or grandparents without a big effort.  In any case, their parents made them perform their English, which they’re studying in school, in front of me, and then perform the piano.  I also played for them for a moment or so, and one of the boys played the accordion really quite well.  Zhang ChunDe invited me to the Yi Ten-Month Festival this upcoming Saturday, and also offered to take me to a village next week to begin my field research.  We are planning to go out to the village on Monday.  He said he’d go with me, find me a translator, a place to stay, make my arrangements and then leave me up there for the week.  I’m very grateful that he’s been so much help to me.  He’s a great contact to have made.

So, things are getting going.  I have already posted photos from last week, and I have a lot of videos which I will upload at some point.

New Video Gallery, Settling In, & Banana Smoothies!

**Before I begin, please notice that there is a new link above called “Video Gallery”, where I have posted and will continue to post videos from my trips.   (Also, I’ve posted a bunch of new photos in the “Photo Gallery” section.)**

I woke up this morning to the sound of elephants, followed by a lion roaring in the distance.  Despite the fact that I’m in Southwest China, there are no jungles within earshot; rather, it’s my proximity to the zoo that woke me.  It’s not always that loud, but every now and then a lion or elephant can be heard mildly in the distance.

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The night I moved in (last Wednesday), I met the agent and his coworker, the landlord and her parents at the apartment.  They treated me as a guest in what would soon be my home—asked me to have a seat, handed me a glass of water.  The father of the landlord, a very cute old Chinese man, then proceeded to take me through the apartment, showing me every knob and contraption as if I were an alien.  I let him have his fun.  “These are the light switches,” he said, flicking them on and off to make sure I knew that they controlled the light.  “This is the toilet.”  He flushed it.  “And this,” he began with an excited tone, “this is the television.”  I went to press the button on the TV to turn it on, showing him that I knew what was what.  “No!  You don’t need to do that.  You can use this!”  He was holding the remote.  He then sat down on the couch, and motioned for me to sit next to him, which I did.  He showed me that pressing the right arrow would make the channels go up, and pressing the left arrow would make the channels go down.  And then the whole system could be shut down like that, with the press of a button.  Truly amazing!

I signed another contract, noting all of the furniture in the place and specifying that I was responsible for paying what utilities I used.  I thanked them all, and then they left.  I was alone.  I have traveled on my own.  I’ve been by myself for long periods of time.  But I’ve never lived on my own before.  It’s a scary feeling to suddenly realize that you are alone in a place.  I immediately went to work putting out some of my own stuff, trying to make it feel like it was mine.  The next day I did some shopping, had the internet set up, and so on.  I spent the rest of the week getting used to my new apartment, cleaning, shopping, and consulting with experts in my research field, trying to more specifically plan my research project.

On Friday, I went to a pickup game of ultimate Frisbee at the Yunnan Nationalities University.  The game is organized by a group of expats—students and English teachers—who get together three times a week to play.  It was really nice to be around people, and get some exercise.  Though, it reiterated that I’m still very out of shape.  Interestingly, three of the people who play are friends of one of my friends from Harbin, and one of the girls is from my hometown, Cherry Hill.  It is truly a small world.  When it got too dark to play, we all headed out for dinner at a Muslim restaurant on WenLin Jie (the main expat street).  It really was a good feeling to not be eating dinner alone, and I think that I’ll probably go play ultimate with them at least once a week.

Today, I slept in, and then decided to go to the Second Hand Market to look for a bike and an electric oven.  It seems that the majority of the second hand markets in the city have already been closed down and demolished.  The only one that I could tell for sure was still standing was one by the airport.  I hopped on a bus, and headed for the market, forgetting that the street approaching the airport is currently under construction.  After being at a standstill in traffic for quite some time, I finally made it to my destination.  The Second Hand Market was not quite what I had expected.  There were rows and rows of crap:  cheap crap, broken crap, fake crap, stolen crap, old crap, and pornographic crap.  I tried to haggle for a bike, but the prices they were asking were ridiculous, and they looked at me like I was crazy when I told them what I was willing to pay.  What’s more, there were no ovens in sight.  (Chinese people are not too big on the whole baking thing, and microwaves seem to have filled their heating of food needs.)  So, I left slightly defeated, and pushed my way onto another bus to wait in traffic.

After getting home, I had a banana smoothie across the street from my apartment.  The good news is that they deliver.  So, if I am in desperate need of a banana smoothie, and I’m too lazy to walk downstairs and directly across the street, they will come to me!  I plan to start attending a class or two this week, as well as posting ads for a language consultant to help me begin my research.  I’m slowly getting used to life here, and I’m also planning some trips (research-related, of course).  As I mentioned above, I have posted a bunch of photos and videos—look for the new “Video Gallery” link on the interface above, or click “Videos” on the sidebar!

Snow in Beijing(?!?) & Coming to Kunming

My week in Beijing was spent with friends—drinking, eating, exploring.  We went to the Olympic area to take photos of the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube.  I met a friend’s friend’s friend there, a Chinese guy named Jack, who had volunteered during the Olympics.  He said that his job had been to explain to people how to use a western-style toilet (not the most glamorous of jobs).  In WuDaoKou (a popular expat area near the Universities), what had once been carts selling pirated DVDs, were now carts selling pirated books!  They’re probably onto something.  Nowadays, movies can easily be downloaded for free.  No need to spend Y5-10 on a disk that might not even work.  Books on the other hand!...  Who wants to sit in front of their computer and read a book?  Besides, DVDs are all equally priced, but it seems perfectly logical to pay more for a larger book (even though they probably pay an even cost).  Their selection wasn’t bad at all, actually.  Copies of Dan Brown’s newest novel, along with actually good and interesting books filled the carts.  I bought copies of Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger, and Lolita by Nabokov for a total of Y40 (about $6 USD)—not sure if I overpaid.  I would have bought even more had I had more room in my luggage.

Halloween was fun but not so Halloween-y.  I went out with some friends for drinks and then to KTV (karaoke).  Every expat club and bar in the city seemed to be having a Halloween party, and flocks of people crowded the streets dressed in the typical costumes—fake blood, lots of makeup, sexy goth for many of the girls, and so on.  In my friend’s apartment complex, many of the Chinese children were enjoying the Western holiday as well, storming through the halls trick or treating.

It was a rainy, cold night.  My last night in Beijing.  I woke up the next morning to a blanket of snow covering the rooftops of the city.  Snow in Beijing?!?  On Halloween?!?  Something didn’t seem right.  As far as I knew, it hadn’t even really snowed in Harbin yet.  Well, as it turns out, something wasn’t right.  The Chinese government had been seeding clouds (making it rain) since just prior to the Olympics, in the hopes of clearing out some of the pollution then, and ending droughts.  Beijing had recently been seeing a dry spell, and the government meteorologists saw fit to take action.  Unfortunately, someone forgot to check the temperature.  What they hoped would be rain, changed overnight to snow.  Check out this article for more details.  (And just in case you’re wondering, despite the pollution, the snow still falls white.)

While I normally enjoy snow, the timing wasn’t very good, as my flight to Kunming was scheduled to leave at 2pm.  After some goodbyes and a two-hour delay, during which time I got to reading my new books, I was on my way to Kunming, with no place to stay, and very little concept of the city.  We landed at around 7:30pm.  And I shuffled out of the airport to find a taxi.  The Lonely Planet guide came in handy, and I found a hotel just by the Green Lake Park (a nice park in the center of the city right near the universities).  It seemed like an ideal place to start out.

The next morning I went to my school to report my arrival and begin my registration.  I had a government-mandated medical exam on Tuesday.  It cost around Y320, and I’d heard that it can be a long process.  Fortunately, I had the luck to arrive a half-an-hour prior to lunch.  Everyone, therefore, seemed to be rushing me through.  They gave me a form to carry around, and I went room by room until there weren’t any more blanks to be filled in.  They began by checking my blood pressure, then down the hall for an EKG (they put metal clamps on my ankles and wrists, and a bunch of squeeze-suction sensors on my chest—I felt like I was about to be tortured).  Next door, they instructed me to take off my shirt for an UltraSound—she squeezed the gel all around my abdomen and quickly checked all sides of me. I asked her if I was pregnant, to which she responded with a perfectly serious face that men could not be pregnant and that my uterus wouldn’t be in that place anyway.  Across the hall, I had a chest X-Ray, then upstairs for a urine test.  A flimsy clear plastic Dixie-like cup with no cover was provided, which I then had to fill up on the next floor up and carry back downstairs (I did my best not to spill).  Finally, a blood test—5 vials and no Band-Aid.  Overall, it took 20 minutes and gave me an interesting view of medical exams in China.

The rest of my week was spent eating and apartment hunting.  This week I’ve had Indian food, Thai food, Yunnan-style hotpot, some traditional Kunming noodles, Hui muslim cuisine, pizza, and so on.  Apartment hunting has not been a fun process.  I think that I’ve looked at about 20 apartments.  I wanted to be relatively close to the center of the city, near some expats, and someplace with at least one separate bedroom (preferably two).  I looked at a number of places to the northeast of the city center, which I later deemed to be too new and too far.  Then, I found a complex just to the west of the city center called ThinkUK, with a good balance of expats and well-to-do Chinese families, some restaurants, a café, and plenty of security.  It seemed like a good bet, but the only suitable place I could find was on the first floor, and it didn’t seem that safe.

I also looked around the Green Lake area (closer to the universities), and saw a lot of old, Chinese-style apartments, many with only squatter toilets.  Finally, yesterday, after consulting about 8 agents and being ready to settle for the first-floor place in ThinkUK, I got a phone call from an agent about a place near the universities.  I told him I didn’t want to meet, because I was too busy, and he guilted me into it by explaining how hard he’d worked to find this place for me.  (In China, agents only make money if they find you a suitable apartment, in which case you pay them one month’s worth of rent.)  I agreed to look at it, even though I wasn’t expecting much.

It was off of YuanXi Road, a crowded food street right by the east (?) gate of YunDa (Yunnan University) and right up the road from Yunnan Minzu Daxue (Yunnan Nationalities University—where I’m affiliated).  The building was set back from the main road, and was actually fairly quiet.  It backed up to a tree- and flower-covered hill, which I believe (on the other side), is home to a temple and a zoo.  The apartment was on the 5th floor with no elevator, and I was beginning to regret meeting the agent.  When we arrived, however, it was actually quite nice.  Spacious and comfortable, three bedrooms and a bathroom with a western toilet.  The kitchen seemed old but usable, and it had a brand new washing machine and refrigerator.  The back windows look out onto the hill, covered in trees and flowers, but still letting in some light.  They quoted me a monthly price, and I left and considered it for a while.  I called the agent a few hours later, and offered him a monthly price Y500 lower than their quoted price.  He consulted with the landlord, called me back and told me it was too low.  So, I raised my offer by Y100.  He said they’d talk it over and let me know in the morning.

This morning, I called him and he said they didn’t want to rent it to me anymore.  My offer was too low, and I wasn’t staying for long enough time to make it worth it.  I told him to raise my offer by another Y100, and then ask the landlord again.  A few hours later, I still hadn’t heard back.  I texted the agent and told him to let me know as soon as possible, because I was going to make an offer on another place.  (Negotiation games are frustrating.)

Meanwhile, I went to a Bird & Flower Market in ‘Old’ Kunming, filled with caged birds, cats, and dogs.  Some of the animals seemed very scared and it was kind of sad.  Oddly, I failed to locate any flowers.  A man on the street told me the market was much smaller now than it had once been.  A bit later I found a piano hall, and practiced for a little while.  I was beginning to lose hope.  About halfway through the third movement of moonlight sonata, however, I got a call from my agent, and he told me that if I agreed to pay all ten months upfront they’d rent it to me.  I told him that wasn’t possible, but that I’d like to meet with him in his office to discuss it.  I cut my practice session short and headed back to his office by Green Lake Park.  After a bit of waiting, negotiating, mutual lying, and explaining how I didn’t have so much money because of the distribution of my scholarship, we agreed on 3 months upfront, I put down a security deposit and scheduled another meeting for the following morning to sign a contract.  This is the first time that I’ve looked for an apartment, and it didn’t help that the whole process was carried out in Chinese in an unfamiliar city.  All in all, it’s been a frustrating week, and the sooner I can move out of this hotel and into an apartment, the better.

(I owe photos and more interesting descriptions/stories.  I’ll find time after I move in on Monday or Tuesday.)

P.S.  The weather here is amazing!!!  Blue skies (mostly), mild temperatures, and lots of sunshine.  I really enjoy this city, and once I settle into my apartment and finish registering, I’m sure I’ll have a chance to explore it and really enjoy my time here.

The Last Leg in Harbin & Back in Beijing

Alright, well at this point, I certainly owe a post.  Idleness only begets laziness.  We had about two weeks off of class because of the H1N1 outbreak.  While I had set some personal goals for myself during that time, it’s amazing how fast the time goes when there is so little to do.  I got most of my homework done, saw the Siberian Tiger Park, visited the New Modern Synagogue and explored (what was once) the Jewish part of Harbin.  Classes started up again on October 12 with finals scheduled to begin about a week later.  So, we had one week of mostly review classes before final exams and our departure from Harbin.

The two weeks off couldn’t have come at a worse time for me psychologically.  With only two weeks remaining, I got lost in half-hearted preparation for finals, spending time with friends, and packing.  I wrote my final paper on the impact of social factors on languages of varying speaker populations, focusing primarily on Mandarin and Yi (the language I’ll be researching in Yunnan).  My Chinese composition skills seem to have improved immensely through the CET Harbin program (as have my listening and speaking skills) and it didn’t take me long to crack out the 2500-character Chinese paper.  While I was consciously unaware of how much I have improved since I got to China in July, my vocabulary, listening, speaking, pronunciation, and writing are all better now than they were three and a half months ago.  Unfortunately, my tones do still have a lot of problems, which sometimes makes it difficult for people to understand me.  I think that I will motivate myself to continue practicing pronunciation in Kunming.

Final exams finished on Friday, and it was an amazing feeling to be done with the last exam that I will have to take in possibly a very long time.  The weekend was spent packing, celebrating, and trying to organize myself.  I have obtained quite a few odds and ends while in Harbin, which made it difficult to fit everything in my bags.  So, I mailed myself a package to Kunming.  Since 3 of my 4 Fulbright friends in the CET program with me will be researching in Beijing, and the 4th wanted to go on a trip, we all planned to head down to Beijing together.  We’d purchased 5 hard-sleeper tickets the previous week.  We’d showed up 20 minutes after the tickets went on sale, and 5 of the trains had already been sold out.  We ended up with a slow train, 15 hours south, arriving at 5:30am Monday.  With so much luggage to move, we decided to check some bags.  When you check bags on trains in China, they may or may not be sent on the same train that you’re on.  You pay by weight and speed of delivery.

We got into Beijing right on time (trains in China are almost never late).  It was easy to find taxis at such an early hour, and we all headed up to Wudaokou together.  Two of my friends are staying in an apartment there, and my other friend and I found a hostel close by.  We put our bags down (at least the ones we hadn’t checked), and then regrouped for a Western breakfast (3-egg omelet, iced coffee, and a side of sausage for me).  In the afternoon, I headed over to Beiwai to say hi to some friends and teachers at IES.  My friend hardly recognized me—since I last saw her in July, I grew a beard, lost 30 lbs, and improved my Chinese pronunciation.  She said I was a completely different person.  (I made some of my typical jokes to show her I hadn’t changed that much.)

Every time I return to Beijing, there seem to be new subway lines to explore.  This time was no exception.  The new Line 4 in Haidian (north-west Beijing) adds subway access to a number of the universities (including a stop near Beiwai) and Zhongguancun, the technology area.  However, the system is still overcrowded and there seem to be countless new lines under or scheduled for construction.  By 2015, the entire city should be reachable by subway.

It feels good to be done with the CET program and be back in Beijing, but there is still so much uncertainty about what comes next.  I fly down to Kunming this Sunday.  Sunday night I’ll have to find a hotel, and Monday I should probably start looking for apartments.  What’s more, I’ll have to register for classes, and start the paperwork to get a residency permit (this involves time, patience, a medical exam, and a fee—from what I’ve been able to discern).  In the meantime, I’m just laying low in Beijing—planning some reunions with old friends, and continuing to have fun with new ones.  I know I’ll be busy over the next week or two, especially after getting to Kunming, but I’ll try to write another post.  If you didn’t notice, my photos from Dandong are now available, and I have a ton of random photos to sort and upload when I get a chance.

Outbreak in Harbin & Teasing North Korea

I set out last weekend on a trip with the whole of the CET program here to a city called DanDong, across the Yalu River from North Korea.  On Friday, before we left, rumors were flying that H1N1 had been confirmed at our school (HIT).  Some people said classes were being canceled by professors, while others claimed that the H1N1 that was at our school was more resilient and people were getting sicker.  Still others said that our campus didn't even have H1N1, and it was the other campus that had an outbreak.  There were no public notices to confirm or deny anything, and we were off on our trip anyway.  The program outfitted us all with cloth face masks and advised us to wear them in the train station and other public places.

We had a hard sleeper heading east--a slow train.  It took us about 12 hours to get to DanDong, and we set out immediately for some group touring.  I'm not used to traveling with so many people, and the pace was certainly far too slow for my tastes.  After spending some time by the river and visiting a half-bridge, which had been dismantled by the North Koreans, we headed a few hours inland to a somewhat touristy Manchurian village to spend the night.  It is interesting to see the resources of your surroundings so directly turned to nourishment.  Walking around, I saw ducks, corn stalks, the skins of a recently-slaughtered lamb.  It was easy to see what would be on the menu that night.

But there were also some surprises.  DanDong and its surrounding area are known (sometimes infamously) for their seafood.  We were also served tiny shrimp-like things, fried and served whole, and a local fish.  After dinner and a performance, they roasted the lamb over a bonfire, and had us pull pieces right off the spit.  The next day we visited a lake and then went hiking.

After enjoying nature, it was time for a 3.5 hour bus ride back into DanDong.  We made it in just after dark, and just in time to be dazzled by the nighttime spectacles of this border city.  I should note that most Chinese cities are abound with flashing lights and weird sculptures, but from my experience so far, DanDong takes the cake.  As the city came into view, fireworks sparkled in the distance.  The first buildings to zoom by were high-rises, black against the night's sky with horizontal flashing white bars like some great mainframes out of the Matrix.  Driving along the river, we saw that the dark and empty space above and beyond the North Korean riverbank was being teased by the thriving Chinese city.  A tower in the middle of the city, shone a thick green laser beam out as far as the eye can see, rotating out over the city, across the river, and into the black expanse of North Korea.  One can't help but think that it is an intentional jab at the North Korean people living in poverty in the shadow of Chinese development.

We strolled along the river, where children were running with sparklers, men were setting off flying lanterns, and small stands were pushing North Korean cigarettes and money.  There is one bridge across the river in this part of the city, a suspension bridge, which is immediately beside an older half-bridge.  Like the other half-bridge that we'd visited, this one had also been dismantled by the North Koreans.  Interestingly, however, prior to being dismantled, the bridge had been accidentally bombed by the US Air-force during the Korean War.  By the bridge, a ragged man with very plain clothes came up to us, and asked us to take his picture with North Korea in the background.  He apparently spoke no Chinese, and his camera was an old film camera.  Supposedly thousands of North Koreans attempt to cross from North Korea into China every year, and we wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if this man was a North Korean who had made it across successfully.

The next morning we set out on a boat to approach North Korea, and took a bunch of photos of men and women working outside of factories, children playing by the river, fishermen on small boats, and a Ferris wheel, motionless (I've read that the Ferris wheel is only used a few times per year).  Later that day, when I was resting in my hotel room, I heard a series of loud bangs immediately outside my window--my window was open, and I could hardly hear myself say "what the F*** is that?!?".  What had startled me out of my sleep as some sort of imagined attack by the North Koreans turned out to be fireworks and firecrackers set off in honor of a wedding being held at the hotel.

On our way back to the train station we were informed (in English, signifying the importance of the news) that while H1N1 had originally only been on our secondary campus, that a number of people on our campus had been confirmed with the virus, and that classes would be canceled for the rest of this and the following week.  The train got back into Harbin at 3:30am, and we piled out onto the platform with our masks on.  Upon returning to our dorm, the security guard checked all of our temperatures with an infrared thermometer.  New signs on our doors advised us not to visit anyone who might be sick.

Anyone with a fever is being unconditionally quarantined in the building next door for at least a week.  We've been told that if we're quarantined, food and drinking water will be provided, but that there is no access to the internet or a shower.  I've been wearing my mask in crowded places, buses, etc. to hopefully avoid any quarantining.

In the meantime, this week was also 10/1, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.  Chinese flags and red lanterns are in every direction, and a lot of people have gone home.  In honor of the holiday, I went to see the new movie "建国大业" ("The Founding of a Republic").  It is a very long movie about the power struggle between the KMT and the CPC, and the eventual founding of the People's Republic.  There's not quite as much propaganda as you might expect in the film, seeing how it was a national effort, but it does typically glorify Mao.  The film is full of cameos by famous Chinese actors, the only one of which I recognized was Jackie Chan, who showed up as a mustachioed Hong Kong reporter.  Overall, the movie seemed as if it was not ready to be released, and it was forced out of production in time for the holiday.

While I don't have class for the next week, my teachers have all loaded me up with homework.  Still, I plan to take the time to explore some of Harbin's sites and relax.  This weekend I'll head to the Siberian Tiger Park, the Jewish synagogue and cemetery, and possibly to 731 - the Japanese germ warfare experimental base.  I have only three weeks till my program here is over, and I'm still looking for an apartment in Kunming.  So, it seems I have have plenty to do to fill my time.  While I'm glad to have a little more time to relax, I can't help but feel that one of my three remaining weeks wasted is anything but counterproductive.  Still, there's not much I can do about that.

I will be posting photos from DanDong and North Korea soon, along with some random videos, so check back!

Quarantine, High Holidays, and PHOTOS!

Time seems to be flying by since I got back from my trip.  My class schedule has been pushed back to the afternoons (after a bit of complaining), and now I can stay up late and still actually sleep.

We were told last week that there was an H1N1 outbreak at Heilongjiang University (HeiDa), which is only about two miles from HIT, where I'm studying.  Apparently, a Canadian brought it to Harbin, where it quickly spread due to the close living quarters and poor circulation in the dormitories.  (Some dorm rooms are shared by 8 or more students.)  HeiDa responded by quaranting all students with any signs of illness or fever, canceled classes, and sealed off their campus.  HIT, wary of the possibility of the virus spreading to our campus, put a partial quarantine in place, only allowing people with university IDs to enter the premises.  Additionally, the Chinese students will no longer be allowed to return home for the upcoming Chinese National Day, being given only one day off (a Thursday), rather than Thursday through the following Wednesday.

As I'm living in one of the foreign student dormitories, we also encountered some new restrictions.  They pasted a large notice in the lobby of our dorm informing us that no one not residing in the building would be allowed in, and that we'd be required to take our temperatures and report them each day.  They provided one used thermometer for every two roommates and pasted a report sheet on everyone's door.

The weather has been getting colder here, which doesn't help the spread of illness, whether it be H1N1 or the common cold.  At night the temperature's been dropping down to near-freezing.  I felt like there's been a great deal of overreaction to H1N1 here, but perhaps that's just my American perspective as most of the Chinese people I've talked to seem to be fully accepting of the measures that have been put into place.  And, I suppose better safe than sorry.

Since we're in the midst of the Jewish High Holiday season, I've been having a bit of difficulty reconciling my current lack of Jewish community.  Even when I was at the U of R, despite being away from home, I still had plenty of Jewish friends and a Hillel and Chabad to choose from for religious services.  Out here in Harbin, however, this city, which once was home to a thriving Jewish community of over 20,000 Jews, has been left vacant of true Jewish culture and religion, only a synagogue-turned-museum, some Jewish stars on buildings, and a Jewish cemetery outside the city left to signify that there was ever any Jewish presence here.

I considered traveling down to Beijing for Rosh Hashanah, as there's a fairly active Jewish community and a Chabad there, but the price of the ticket and my lack of time dissuaded me.  So, I spent Rosh Hashanah on Saturday going through a short service on my own, and performing Tashlich on Sunday with a friend.  I also took it upon myself to make a honey cake, which was certainly a task, since some ingredients are hard to come by in China, never mind the complete lack of measuring utensils.  You certainly need to be resourceful to bake successfully here, but the cake came out moist and tasty.

Yom Kippur will be a little bit more difficult since I will be traveling this weekend with my program.  We will be leaving tomorrow night for DanDong, a city in Liaoning province, across the YaLu river from North Korea.  It should be a good trip, but I'll get into that in a later post.  In any case, I'll figure something out, and I should probably stop procrastinating my homework, since it seems that tomorrow is bound to be a long day.

Below are three of the panoramas that I took on my trip to Western Inner Mongolia.  I have a few more, and I've also uploaded all of my photos.  Check them out in the 'photo gallery' section, or by clicking here.   (ALSO, check out the "open in fullscreen" button for a slide show of my photos, but be wary if your computer doesn't have much RAM.)

Finally, please notice that by clicking on any of the photos below (or any of the photos from my last post), you can see a larger version of the photo in a lightbox.

[caption id="attachment_162" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Fresh Water Lake in the Badan Jilin Desert"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_163" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Twin Lakes in the Badan Jilin Desert"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_164" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Plateau at Nansi in Western Inner Mongolia"][/caption]

I have some videos to post as well, but not really any time to play with them.  So look forward to them in an upcoming post!

I should also mention:


[This is not an official Department of State website or blog, and the views and information presented are my own and do not represent the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State.]

Mysterious Deserts, Mongolian Horses, and Buddhist Temples

Let me first apologize for such a long post.  It's a description of my week-long trip to Ningxia and Western Inner Mongolia.  Hopefully someone might be bored or care enough to read it!

The train to Beijing took us 8 hours south through Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, and Hebei provinces, passing factories, farms, cities, and mountains. We got into Beijing at 11:30pm, excitedly rushing out of the train station to the distinct feeling of the capital city around us. After walking past the crowds outside the station, we finally found a taxi a few blocks down, and headed directly to the airport for our 7:30am flight. We decided it wasn’t worth risking oversleeping, and since the ride to the airport can take up to or over an hour depending on traffic, we would sleep at the airport. So, that’s what we did.

We got to the airport after 1, and were told that we could check in at 6am. We found a spot with some couches, and settled in. I made myself a place on the floor, having had too much experience with airport couches, and set my alarm for 6am. By 6, there was already a line to check-in. We made it through security reasonably quickly, and our trip was off to an only slightly bumpy start.

The flight to Yinchuan wasn’t a long one after our 8-hour train ride and night in the airport. We got in around 9:30am, and took a taxi to the bus station to buy 5pm tickets to Alashan Zuoqi that evening. So, we had the day to explore Yinchuan.

Yinchuan is the capital of Ningxia, the Hui “autonomous” region—a small province in China’s Northwest (actually the northern part of central China), tucked between Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Shaanxi provinces. It is homeland to the Hui (an Islamic Chinese minority group), and has many mosques, goat/sheep meat, and Hui people. Outside the bus station, Yinchuan seemed dusty and plain—Hui men walked by in white caps, the sun brighter than in Harbin.

We strolled for a while, heading towards the downtown area, not realizing how far south we actually were. After asking a local couple for directions, we found that we were actually 5km or so south of the city center. So, we found a cab and headed north. Our cab driver was a Hui man with a thick accent who complimented me on my beard in Putonghua (Mandarin) and proceeded to ask if we were Muslims. We informed him that we were not, and he went off on a rant about the 5 pillars of Islam, and how we were all going to hell.

Some comments about Yinchuan: the city center is much more developed than its surroundings, there are countless hospitals and drugstores, and parts of the city are very typically Chinese. We walked around aimlessly for a while, witnessing a fight on the street with some nice back and forth screaming, and one man receiving a boxing-like blow to the forehead resulting in a bloody gash, which he overdramatized for a while before giving up.  At one point, we walked into the “Yinchuan World Trade Center” to use their bathroom, and they tried to direct us to the second floor (possibly assuming that we were there for some sort of conference). We went to a Buddhist temple north of the city center to climb to the top of a pagoda. Unfortunately, the pagoda was closed, and the place was swarming with wasps. It did seem, however, that these “Buddhist” wasps were particularly peaceful.

That night we headed back to the bus station, and took a two-hour bus to a town in Inner Mongolia called in Mongolian, Bayan Khot (阿拉善左旗 ALaShan ZuoQi, in Mandarin). When we arrived, the city was dark. Candles in the windows told us that the power was out, and the headlights of passing cars shined their beams through the dusty streets. We found a hotel near the bus station, and negotiated for a room. When we went back downstairs, they told us that they had given us the wrong room, and insisted that we move our bags, which we did. By that time, the power had come back on one side of the street, so we went to eat at the only restaurant that seemed to have lights. A bunch of drunk men waved at us, and eventually came over, asking us what country we were from, apparently to settle a bet.

Alashan Zuoqi seemed like a small town, quaint in its backwards ways and power outages. We liked it. We stopped by a hotel right next to the bus station to ask about the next morning’s bus to Alashan Youqi (a town 6 hours west from Zuoqi). We were told that we were in luck—the driver of the bus to Youqi happened to be sitting right in front of us, and promised to save us three seats on his bus so we wouldn’t have to wake up quite that early. Our intel told us that there was only one bus per day from Zuoqi to Youqi, which left at 7:10am, normally necessitating a 6am arrival at the bus station to assure seats.

When we got back to the hotel, we were told that they had once again given us the wrong room, and asked us to move our bags. Slightly reluctantly, we moved once again. In so doing, a bunch of Chinese tourists asked to have their pictures taken with us, so we appeased them and went on our way.

The next morning we showed up at the bus station at 6:45am. My stomach was bothering me, and rather than be caught on a 6 hour bus ride in need of a restroom, I sucked it up, and squatted over a hole in the shack out back beside a bunch of Chinese and Mongolian men. When I rejoined my friends, there was some confusion as to which bus to get on. Apparently, the driver of the other bus had failed to secure our seats to Youqi on his bus. There was another bus, which was due to leave at 7:30am, but as we were preparing to get on, we heard one of the fuwuyuans say “他们不可以坐那辆车—司机喝醉了” (“They can’t ride that bus—the driver’s drunk!”). They apparently overlooked the fact, and pushed us on board. We were obviously quite hesitant, and I asked them if the driver was drunk, to which they responded that there were two drivers, and we’d be fine. We didn’t seem to have much choice.

The ride was a bumpy one, not so much due to the driver but to the road, which was undergoing massive amounts of construction in anticipation of a surge in tourism. We stopped at one point for lunch. None of the three of us were hungry, so we waited by the bus in the shade. While we were waiting, a woman was riding by on a motorcycle when a white sack fell off the back. It didn’t seem all that odd, until we heard a deep meowing sound. She parked her motorcycle on the side of the road, picked up the sack, and started walking towards the other bus, which had also stopped for lunch. Sure enough, the meowing was getting louder. There was a cat in the bag. She continued towards the bus, and set the sack down with the rest of the luggage waiting to be stuffed under the bus. While I can’t say that I know anything about her and her cat’s situation, it did seem a bit like animal cruelty.

Back on the bus, the driver asked us why we were heading to Youqi, and if we had already arranged a tour to the desert. We told him that we hadn’t, and he called a friend of his, who gave us a price, and said he’d meet us when we got off the bus.

Sure enough, upon our arrival in Youqi, there he was on the bus, addressing my American-Chinese friend, Ariane, as “tour guide” (导游) before we could even grab our luggage. We corrected his mistake, and he took us to his tour company’s office to negotiate. It seemed fairly legit. We haggled for a while, not making too much headway. Finally, I told them how we were exchange students, and didn’t have that much money. They agreed to a couple hundred kuai cheaper, and we began the paperwork. When they asked for an additional Y150 per person, we were taken aback, but they said it was for our necessary travel permit to enter the desert. We argued again, but it didn’t seem to be getting us anywhere. We had little choice, and finally agreed. Our desert tour was going to cost us a little over Y1000 (USD$140) per person per day.

The driver took us in a jeep to pick up food and water, and we headed towards the desert. After 20 minutes or more of driving, the sand dunes finally appeared in the distance. We stopped at the foot of the dunes to switch to a “more reliable” jeep, and set out. The jeep powered over the sand dunes like a roller coaster, up and down, up and down. We peaked some of the dunes at over 60kph. I don’t think I’ve ever been motion sick before. A couple times, our driver stopped to pick a path through the dunes, or to clear sand off the ridge of a dune to prevent from flying off and crashing. He said he had been driving in the desert for 20 years, and he seemed to know what he was doing—managing the both shifter and a high/low gear shifter for 4-wheel drive. It was a bit like skiing in a jeep.

The Badan Jilin Desert is a very interesting place. Beneath the sand flows water, which keeps the dunes in place, and creates hundreds of fresh and salt water lakes nestled between the mammoth mountains of sand. The stationary sand dunes here, as I mentioned in my last post, are the highest in the world—the tallest of which towers at 1,640ft from base to peak, and is called “Desert Everest”.

We drove for several hours, stopping every now and then by lakes to take photos. As the sun was beginning to set, we made it to our destination for the evening—a lodging by a saltwater lake, beside which a Buddhist temple had been built at the foot of a wall of sand. Though our room for the evening was no Holiday Inn, this place seemed truly magical. There was desert in every direction. No other tourists. As it got dark, the moonlight peered through the clouds and reflected off the lake, and the stars shone brightly above us.

The next morning, we woke up fairly early, and walked around a bit. Our driver went to wake up someone to open the temple for us. We went inside and admired what it must have taken to get all the materials for the temple into such a remote part of the desert. I imagined the monks riding a camel three days through the hot desert, finally making it to this lake, and deciding to stay. I don’t know if that’s how it happened—but had I had the option, I might have stayed as well.

We hopped back in the jeep, and drove to another lake, before making our approach on the highest dune, “Desert Everest”. Our driver told us he would get us as high as possible by jeep, but then we’d have to climb to the summit on foot. We set out on foot, falling back with each step in the hot sand, but the climbing went faster than it seemed it would. The top of each dune seemed like the spine of some great monster, split in two: the left side had been ruffled and compacted by the wind, but the right side remained smooth and powdery. A small lizard scuttled along in front of us. There was no one in sight anywhere—no footprints, no sounds of cars in the distance—we made it to the summit, and the world was ours. The desert spread out around us and showed us more lakes than we’d imagined. We enjoyed our victory atop the tallest stationary dune in the world, took some photos, and then headed back down towards the jeep.

The second day’s ride was rough. All of our stomachs hated us for our current situation, and we were more than happy to stop at each lake to take photos. Fortunately, we hadn’t eaten much for breakfast, or it may have been even more unfortunate. At one point, our driver took us to a particular dune where a phenomenon known as “booming sound” is most prominent. The Badan Jilin desert is known for its powerful booming sand—when sand gets pushed or blown off the top layer of a dune, it creates a loud booming noise. We were too tired to climb very high, but we slid down a good 15 feet or so, and experienced what seemed more like farting sand than booming sand. Still, it was fun.

Our trip to the desert was amazing, and despite my nausea, I was sad to go. The driver told us that UNESCO had been here the previous year, and we were a little uneasy imagining the place becoming touristy. With people in every direction, the remoteness and vastness of the desert would certainly lose its power.

Upon our return to Youqi, our driver helped us find a hotel. We emptied the sand from our shoes, and settled in. While we were getting comfortable, there was a knock on our door. The hotel proprietor was there with two PSB (Public Security Bureau—police) officers. They asked to see our passports, and I gladly handed them over. (It’s common practice in China to register with the PSB in place you visit—if you’re staying in a hotel, they usually photocopy your passport and take care of it for you, but apparently Youqi didn’t get many foreigners.) They said they’d take our passports to their office and bring them back in a bit, but I insisted that I go with them while my friends unpack.

Their office turned out to be a small motel-style room in a low building behind the hotel. There were photos of children on the wall, and it seemed as though it might have been the hotel manager’s home. Attached to a small computer between the two beds was a new-looking machine. The PSB officers, two young-looking Mongolian men, were fairly nice and chatted with me as they struggled to use their new machine. I spelled out our Chinese names for them, and we discussed the UNESCO visit to the area and how things were getting more and more touristy. We explored Youqi for the rest of the day and evening, and woke up early for our 6-hour bus ride back to Zuoqi.  I threw my bag under the bus, only to find out later that it had been doused with some sort of vinegar sauce, causing all of my clothes and jackets to smell like vinegar for the rest of the trip.  (I'm still washing them to get the smell out.)

Zuoqi Mongolians are known for being big in the trade of semi-precious stones, and we spent the rest of our day in Zuoqi walking around and looking at stones and jewelry made of agate and other stones. It seemed that our first, nighttime impression of Zuoqi had been false. The city was actually quite large, and much more developed than Youqi. We walked around till dark, and found a square by a large stadium, where people were playing pool outside under a series of tents. We decided to join in, and played a game, interrupted continually by people watching and photographing us (two of us being white). A bunch of local guys asked to have their photo taken with me, and then we finished up our game. It was Y1 (USD$0.14)/game, and the proprietor tried to give us our game for free, possibly honored (?) by our presence. Of course, I refused, paid her the Y1, and we went on our way.

We chatted with the lady at the front desk, asking her if she knew how to get to a place called Moon Lake (about an hour day). She said she had a friend who could drive us the next day, she called him, and he came over to negotiate a price with us. The next day, he met us early outside the hotel, and we headed towards Moon Lake. When we got there, we found that on top of the fairly high-priced Y60/person entrance ticket, they required that you use their Jeeps to get to the lake. The minimum per jeep was four people, so all in all they wanted almost Y1000 for the 3 of us to enter the lake area. This price didn’t even include any of the activities that we were hoping to do, like sand-sledding, camel riding, and whatnot. We told them we might just walk to the lake, but they said it wasn’t possible. Apparently the lake was 15km away, and would take someone who didn’t know how to walk in sand 6 hours, while it would take someone who knew how to walk in sand 4 hours. What’s more, it was a windy day, and we might lose our way. They told us how a lone traveler had come a while ago, and thought the price was too high, so he walked on his own and got lost for two days. Heeding their warnings and our wallets, we called our driver back and asked him to take us to a Buddhist temple complex by a mountain instead.

It seemed we’d made the right decision. We had a great day hiking up into the green mountains, beholding the Buddhist temples, Stupas, and Aobaos (large white territorial structures), and hiked fr an hour or so up past the main temple to a crossroads facing a huge, green plateau across the large open space. We enjoyed the sight for a while, and then headed up towards a temple at the top of one of the mountains. When we got there, an older Buddhist monk took us into a cave, and told us to take the water from the rocks and put it on ourselves for good health. Then he took us into a small room and told us to eat jiaozi (dumplings). We were a bit confused at the large plate of jiaozi in front of us, but we each had one or two so as not to be impolite. Afterwards, we went into the temple, while 8 older monks were chanting, playing bells, and horns. We talked with one monk, who told us how it was a holiday, and that they only made these jiaozi for a short period of time each year, and that they would bring us good luck for the rest of the year.

We left feeling very special at having had the luck to come to this temple on such an important occasion, and headed back down towards the main temple complex. We called our driver to pick us up, and headed back to Zuoqi. We took a cab to a more bustling part of town, and ate Mongolian lamb-meat hotpot. The next day, we called our driver back, and asked him if he knew anywhere to ride horses. He took us west of the city a bit, and treated us to traditional Mongolian milk tea, goat-milk cheese, and sour solidified yoghurt. Then we took turns riding the horses. They asked if we knew how to ride, and I told them I had ridden, but not in a very long time. The horses were not trained to the point that they were willing to be ridden. Our Mongolian friends let me ride on my own, and I got into a fast trot for a while, until my horse decided to try to decapitate me by riding under a low-hanging cord. I fell off, and was a little disappointed at myself. I felt a little better when our Mongolian driver also fell off his horse in the same way.

After riding, we headed back into town, and took a bus back to Yinchuan, where we found a hotel, walked around a bit, went to a temple fair, and then explored some more. Our last day in Yinchuan, we took a tourist bus out to the XiXia tombs, Yinchuan’s most famous site. It was raining fairly hard, so we explored the museum, got a quick look at one of the tombs (a large mound of dirt that had once been covered by an ornate structure), and then headed back to the bus.

That night we headed back to the airport for our return flight to Beijing. We got into Beijing after 9pm, found a hostel, walked around the night market at Wangfujing for a bit, and then went to Houhai for some drinks. The next morning, we woke up and headed up to Wudaokou for a Western breakfast, and then headed to the train station. Our driver told us we wouldn’t be able to get there, since they were rehearsing for the Chinese National Day, but after some persistence, he agreed to take us as far as he could. It turned out his worries were in vain. We got to the train station, and in 8 short hours found ourselves back in a rather brisk Harbin, not quite ready to get back to class.

Well, sorry for the novel. I have tons of pictures, some panoramas, and videos to post soon, so check back!

Click "Hybrid" on the map below, and zoom-in to explore my trip!
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Avoiding Plague and Adventure Planning

In between studying for midterms, planning a trip for my inter-semester break, and trying not to be sick, there hasn’t been much time to write.

My roommate starting coughing violently throughout the night about two weeks ago, and I figured it was just a bad cold.  But after he went to the doctor and told me it was fèi yán (pneumonia, lit. “lung inflammation”), I started asking questions.  It turns out he had mycoplasma infection—a bacterial infection in the lungs, which is apparently fairly contagious.  So, after some minor freaking out (including wearing a mask in my room for a night), I realized if it really was a mycoplasma infection, it was probably too late to avoid getting it, and I should just minimize its effects.  I got the name of an antibiotic from an American doctor, translated the name into Chinese, and headed to the pharmacy.  One good (?) thing about China is that you often don’t need a prescription to pop some pills.  Instead, you just walk into the pharmacy and either point to what you want, or tell them what your symptoms are and have them recommend (usually incorrectly, from my limited experience) a drug.  They tell you that the more expensive brand is of course better, you pay, and walk out with a week’s supply of antibiotics.  (For the record, I don’t know if it’s the same process for more serious medication.)

In any case, the experience of living with a sick Chinese roommate raised some concerns about general health sanitation in China:  coughing without covering one’s mouth, coughing into one’s hands and then handling other people’s chopsticks, spitting (as usual), sharing food, going out as normal instead of isolating oneself, and so on.  In addition, the question of what a cook or a fuwuyuan (waiter) in a restaurant would do if they had a similar infection came up, to which the response was, “probably just go to work anyway.”

Despite my concerns about getting sick, I, like a sick cook in a restaurant, had no choice but to go about life as usual.  Actually, I normally wouldn’t be that concerned over getting sick, except that my midterms were approaching this week, followed by a week-long vacation next week.  And fortunately, while I definitely think I did get sick, my friends doused me with Chinese medicine and vitamin C, and it’s been rather mild.

Midterms haven’t been too bad.  All essays here have to be hand-written, so I spent the weekend writing a 9-page essay about linguistics.  Then on Wednesday, I gave a presentation on language contact and evolution (in Chinese, of course) to a panel of teachers, and answered their questions.  I think that my Chinese has definitely already improved, and I have about two more months to make even more progress.

We have this upcoming week off to travel before getting back to class, so a few friends and I are planning to go to western Ningxia and Inner Mongolia.  I went to Inner Mongolia last year to see the desert and the grasslands, but this trip (since we have a full week) should take me a bit farther afield.  We’ll take the train from Harbin down to Beijing this weekend, and then fly out immediately the next morning to Yinchuan, Ningxia.  Ningxia is a small province in what is actually China’s northern mid-west, but which is considered the country’s north-west.  As far as I’ve been able to discern, in China Ningxia is known for two things:  being somewhat barren, and hosting the largest group of Hui (Muslim) Chinese in the country.

In any case, it should be a real adventure.  We’ll land in Yinchuan, and then take buses across the southern portion of the Gobi desert.  From there, we’ll hire a driver to take us into the Badain Jaran desert for a couple days, including hopefully an overnight stay in a Mongolian yurt and some camel riding.

The Badain Jaran desert seems to be a truly remarkable place.  In addition to boasting the world’s highest sand dunes, some reaching higher than the Empire State building, spread throughout the desert are hundreds of salt- and fresh-water lakes and several Buddhist temples.  It should make for some beautiful sites and great photography.  I’ve seen it described as both “awe-inspiringly beautiful” and one of the most mysterious deserts in the world.

From Badain Jaran, we’ll head back towards Yinchuan, spending a few days exploring the Helan mountains and the Western Xia Tombs at their feet (pyramid like tombs of the Tangut Empire), the Tenggeli Desert (and Moon Lake), partaking of some Hui cuisine in Yinchuan, and perhaps riding horses on the grasslands.

I went to the train station a couple nights ago to buy our return tickets from Beijing to Harbin.  I know it’s been said over and over again, but it’s amazing how many people there are in China.  The train station seemed busier than if the entire state of Rhode Island were evacuating.  I waited in line to buy tickets, only to be told that I had to go downstairs to get the tickets we wanted.  So, I went downstairs, asking several guards for directions along the way, since the train station is huge.  When I got to the main ticket hall, I found that it was even more crowded.  So, rather than wait in the wrong line, I waited in the line for the Information Desk, to ask which line I should wait in.  The rather overwhelmed fuwuyuan told me any line would do, so I picked a “shorter” one and waited.  And waited.  While waiting, I took it upon myself to count how many people were there.  I would say that there were on average a constant 15-20 people rotating through each line.  Multiplied by the 30 lines in the hall, this means that there were roughly 450-600 people at any given time waiting to buy tickets.  Add to that the small children running around, and the fact that this was 8:30pm on a Wednesday evening, and China was truly showing itself.  It should be said, however, that despite the huge numbers of people, and the poor lining up skills, the Chinese really do handle it well—the next time you’re waiting in line at the DMV or cafeteria think about how much quicker things could go if the Chinese were managing that few people.

Needing to relax and pack, that’s all I’ve got for now.  I’ll write more about what we actually do on our trip after the fact, and provide some more information about the places and things we see.  And hopefully, some amazing photos.

Getting to Know Harbin

The past few weeks have flown by.  I long for boredom.  My classes aren’t that difficult, but the work seems to be incessant.  The majority of my time recently has been spent doing homework and studying, procrastinating doing homework and studying, and trying to get online (which I finally figured out this past week).

In addition to my four academic classes, I’m also taking a badminton class and a cooking class at night.  The badminton is a lot of fun, and I enjoy  the exercise, even if our teacher does constantly criticize my technique.  Still, it’s a good replacement for racquetball, and helps me stay sane amidst so much work.

Our cooking teacher is an 86 year-old Harbin man with poor hearing, stubby fingers, and a passion for story-telling.  We met with him for the first time this past week to make introductions and discuss what we want to learn to make.  After evaluating all of our Chinese names (as Chinese people often seem to do), he proceeded to explain how cooking is more than just preparing food; rather, that our class will incorporate history, culture, art, and science.  He then told us all about the history of Harbin—how it went from being a simple Manzu (as in Manchurian) village to an international city.  Apparently, in helping the Chinese fight off the Japanese at the end of the 19th century, the Russians built railroads into China, coming in droves to Harbin as an outpost.  He said that by 1920, there were over 30 nationalities of people living in Harbin, including Romanians, Turks, French, and Russians.  While other Chinese cities had been strongly influenced by one nationality of people, ‘invaded’ as some sort of colonies (Qingdao had the Germans, Hong Kong had the British, Shanghai had the French, Macau had the Portuguese, and so on), Harbin was China’s first real international city.  This hodgepodge of influences is visible in the city’s architecture, strewn with hints of Baroque and Roman style, as well as in the city’s cuisine.

I should also mention that our teacher is a linguist, and apparently studied Russian at some point in his life.  Throughout our conversation he sporadically broke out of Chinese into Russian, as well as using Russian words like czar and army.  He told us about how Harbin was the first city in China to get taxis (Shanghai being the second), and how early in the 20th century 16 countries had established consulates here.  After this very long, but quite interesting and entertaining, description of Harbin’s history, we discussed what types of food we wanted to study, deciding on about 10 or 11 dishes, most of which are DongBei specialities (from China’s Northeast), including DiSanXian (made with eggplant, potatoes, and peppers) and BaSi DiGua (fried potatoes in a caramel sauce).

While Harbin does seem to be somewhat developmentally behind compared to cities like Beijing and Shanghai, it is still certainly an international city.  Since I’ve been here, I’ve encountered countless Russians and Koreans, as well as Australians, Ethiopians, Algerians, Pakistanis, Indians, Germans, and French.  Last weekend, in search of a change of scenery, my friends and I studied in a French café complete with wine, cheese, and real coffee.  Of course, the French proprietor and his wife looked a bit disconcerted when I asked them to make me an iced coffee, but I suppose that’s to be expected.

Last Saturday we took a day trip to a small mountain about an hour away to do some hiking.  The weather was nice, and despite the trails being made up of neverending steps (as Chinese hiking so often involves), it was nice to get out.  The air in Harbin isn’t nearly as bad as in Beijing, but you can still tell the difference between the city and the countryside.  I’m looking forward to my time in Yunnan, where I’m hoping I’ll get to do a bit more hiking.

Yesterday we went on a ‘field trip’ to old Harbin, to explore the Muslim area, centered around a large blue mosque.  The streets in the area are decked with aged buildings, interesting architecture, and alleys with fat, shirtless Chinese men playing MaJiang, Chinese poker, and Chinese chess.  Near the river we encountered an animal market with rabbits, birds, crickets, chickens, and fish.  It was an interesting day, and I got some cool photos.

I always forget how different life in China and life in the US can be.  For instance, in the US, you would never see a 6 or 7 year-old girl squat by the side of the road in a busy city to pee, or two little girls cheerfully pushing around a dead rat with a broom.  But, these things don’t seem to be so out of the ordinary here.

Well, that’s it for now.  I’ll try to write again next weekend, but hopefully I’ll be busy since its my birthday.  I’ve been putting photos up on facebook, and I’ll add them to this site as well, in addition to a few videos.  So, check back soon!