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Monthly Archives: September 2006

Tai Shan

  • Route up to Tai Shan, China

This past weekend, I climbed Tai Shan with a few friends. If you’re too lazy to read the background information, Mount Tai is a famous mountain of religious significance about seven hours away from Beijing. Legend has it that whoever climbs the mountain will live one hundred years. It’s incredibly popular, so the climb is as simple as taking the 7,200 steps up to the 1.5km peak (almost a mile). Alternatively, you can pay your way up and travel via combination of bus and cable car up to the peak.

  • Climbers, Tai Shan, China

The 7,200 steps are supposed to take anywhere from three to eight hours — we ended up finishing in about three and a half hours, with several breaks (especially during the final stretch, when it becomes particularly steep and the air is significantly thinner).

  • Top stairs, Tai Shan, China

Once you reach the top (and all along the way) there are tons of vendors selling food, incense, religious paraphernalia, even bird call whistles (not sure why). If you happen to be laowai be prepared for many requests for photographs (rural tourists find foreigners slightly more intriguing than city folk). I started requesting payment for the privilege; but no one took me seriously, ruining a potentially lucrative career opportunity.

The view is pretty impressive once you reach the top, although I was suprised how poor the visibility is (not nearly as bad as Beijing, but far worse than Seattle on a non-overcast day).

  • View from top, Tai Shan, China

    This is after I used photoshop

We took the cable car and bus back down in order to save time (despite our newfound longevity, we are busy people).

Getting to and from Tai Shan was an adventure in itself. Language difficulties meant we ended up getting a standing room tickets for the packed seven hour train ride from Beijing. After 1.5 tiring hours, we jumped off the train in Tianjin with hopes of buying real tickets. This, again, was far more complicated than expected — but a short 6 hours later we were on our way in a luxurious soft sleeper. Hopes of an uneventful return trip were foiled by a sold out train.

After surveying our options, we opted for a sleeper bus, which has no seats, only (small) beds. Surprisingly, this too is oversold, and people end up standing and laying in the aisles. The bus made frequent stops, often in bizarre locations, and arrived about an hour and a half late. Sleeping was difficult at best, given the cigarette smoke, frequent loud speaker announcements, and constant jostling from the standing room passengers. Lessons learned.

  • By fil
  • Sep 11, 2006 – 6:29pm
  • Life
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Learning Mandarin through necessity

Last week, I celebrated my two month anniversary in China. During that time, I’ve stitched together a small, but useful amount of Mandarin that gets me through day-to-day life here in Beijing. However, my ability to communicate drops significantly once I stray from typical activities.

For example, I was walking through the Xi’An’s Muslim quarter last weekend (pictures soon) when I felt a tug on my bag. I turned to see someone walking very close to me; I looked at my bag and noticed that one of my zippers had been opened halfway.

Although I’ve been in many areas that are prone to pickpocketing, this was my first encounter with an attempt (successful or not). Ideally, I assume the right thing to do is to yell, find out what (if anything) was taken, then forcibly turn the person in to the authorities.

If only I spoke better Mandarin.

Instead, I tried (and failed) to swear and demanded “What are you doing?” in an angry way. He avoided eye contact and quickly walked away, losing me in the crowds. Not that I could have done much anyway, since I was walking alone in strange city and have the language skills of a shy toddler.

As I prepare to travel around China, my swearing needs more day-to-day practice. In the best case, I said the word for “straw” or “grass” instead of something stronger — but I said it in a very mean way which will probably scar him from life.

Terracotta Warriors

  • Terracotta Warrior, Shaanxi, China

    • Xī’ān’s main attraction is the Terracotta Army, a set of ancient, lifesize warriors made over 2,000 years ago. They were only recently discovered (within the past 30 years), but they’re a huge tourist draw into the area. The archeological site is actually about 45km east of Xī’ān (the airport is also 45km away, in the opposite direction — the long distances and clueless tourists are a cabbie’s dream).

  • Terracotta Warriors, Shaanxi, China

    The aircraft hanger that also houses the warriors

I had unrealistic expectations for the warriors. I imagined thousands of warriors in pristine condition, along with the ability to get up close to the warriors (I wanted to get a picture of one wearing a sombrero I brought).

  • Terracotta Army ruins, Shaanxi, China

In reality, most of the warriors have yet to be excavated — one of the three pits has little more than a couple of damaged soldiers on display. I don’t remember the exact number, but around 1,000 have been unearthed to date. Excavation (and restoration) are still in progress, so I imagine this will change as the years go by.

They’re definitely worth checking out though — just don’t base your expectations around high-quality photos taken with a telephoto lens. Don’t miss the excellent street food in the Xī’ān’s Muslim Quarter either.

See the rest of the Xi’An photos through Flickr.

  • By fil
  • Sep 19, 2006 – 12:45pm
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Yángshuò

  • Pagoda, Yangshuo, China

Last weekend, I visited Yángshuò, a small “village” near the famous Guìlín in beautiful the Guăngxī province (please memorize all those names and spellings, there will be a test). The area is (rightly) famous for the gorgeous hills that do the landscape with surprisingly density.

The venerable Lonely Planet China guidebook (9th edition, approx 5.3 pounds) highlights Yángshuò, calling it a “Sleepy yet hip village — and travellers mecca — plunked within otherwordly topography.”

  • The city, Yangshuo, China

    Sleepy backpacker town?

The hills are definitely gorgeous, but the midwesterner in me has a hard time considering it a sleepy village (the traveler in me has a hard time seeing the “backpacker” aspect too).

I have friends who travelled to Yangshuo two to three years ago, and from their stories it sounds like the city has changed significantly since then. I’ve only been to five cities in China, but they’ve all had two things in common: ubiquitous construction — and significant pollution (its the first time I’ve had any issues with allergies here).

  • Pollution, Yangshuo, China

    The hills before my photoshopping

I hope I caught the town on a bad weekend, because it really is one of the most gorgeous places on earth.

  • The 20 Yuan bill, Yangshuo, China

    You can also see this from the comfort of your home on a 20 Yuan bill

Yángshuò is supposedly the Guìlín for the younger, backpacker crowd. The most famous part of town is Xi Jie, which literally means “West Street” but is more commonly known as “Foreigner Street” because it’s full of hotels and tourist shops originally aimed at backpacking westerners.

I said “originally” for two reasons: first, the majority of western toursits I saw were tour groups comprised of older people. Second, the street is increasingly dominated by domestic chinese taking in a slice of western culture (much like a Chinatown in the US). I copied this text from a guidebook in our hotel (written in Chinese, Japanese, and English — I didn’t fix the minor english mistakes):

Built 1400 years ago, it is also named Foreigners Street and full of human culture attractions with international atmosphere all around. Here the waiters in Bar, restaurant, Internet club and workmanship shop, ordinary residents, even the granny selling the fruits in the street can speak English fluently. Visiting the West Street is a complete experience — you can find that the pure western living way is existing in this Chinese simple countryside, the surprising internation element is contained in such unsophisticated folkway. On West Street, the local foods such as Sticky Rice Cake, Rice Noodle, and the Italian Coffee and Western-Style food, Ancient Chinese Painting, the most popular fashion, Chinese, English, French, Italian and Spanish etc are gathered together here. It looks like impossible, but it is really true. They are all mixed in this 100m long of street. The people here — whether the outer nor the inner, is exactly a group of liver. Here is an ideal leisure place for everyone. You only bring a book, or a few of CD, invite your good friends, turn off Mobile phone and portable computer, drink a cup of coffee or tea, then you will spend a nice time in beautiful scene and music, and know really what the life is.

Aside: The level of English in Yángshuò really is impressive; most everyone there speaks far better english than I speak chinese — which doesn’t say much. It compares favorably to the amount of english spoken in the parts of Thailand I visited (both places trounce Beijing, which will pose an interesting challenge for the Olympics in two years).

Checkout the rest of the photos in my Yángshuò photoset.

October Holiday

In a few hours I will leave to travel outside of Beijing for the fourth (and then fifth) weekend in a row. I’m going to the Gānsù province in central China.

I’ll be travelling for 7 days for during the week-long October Holiday which starts with China’s National Day on October 1st. Pretty much everyone in the country has the week off, and apparently a large number of them travel during that week. China has around 1.3 billion people — I predict zero traffic problems.

I’m looking forward to the trip, we’ll be spending in Three Beaches National park taking in the chinese countryside and eating delicious sichuan food (mmm… spicy).

Getting to the park will be a mini-adventure: a flight from Beijing to Xī’ān, followed by a standing room only train (everything else was sold out) from Xī’ān to Bǎojī, followed by a 6 hour bus ride that should get us within striking distance of the park.

Aside: I had never heard of the city of Bǎojī and I doubt you had either, unless you’re chinese. I figured it was a relatively small town with a train station — wrong. Apparently it is the 25th largest city in China, with a population of 3.7 million — roughly the size of the Seattle metro area, and slightly less than the number of people inside of Los Angeles city limits).

We’re thinking of venturing out from the park, possibly to Lánzhōu (population 3.2 million) — although after reading this, perhaps we should reconsider:

Lanzhou is said to be one of the most polluted cities in China, if not around the world. The air quality is so poor that at times one can not see Lanshan, the mountain rising straight up along the south side of the city. The city is located in a narrow river valley with an unfortunate curve causing it to be hemmed in with no free air flow. Lanzhou is also the home of many factories including petroleum processing, and suffers from large dust storms kicked up from the Gobi Desert, especially in the winter and spring.