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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.

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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).

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  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).

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.

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.

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).

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).

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  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.

When translating western names and places, the chinese frequently manage to match a meaning to a phonetic approximation for the name. A good example of this is with country names.

In Chinese, USA is translated as Mei guo — which roughly sounds like America, and translates to “Beautiful land.” England is referred to as Ying guo — “Heroic land”; France is Fa guo — “Lawful land”; Germany, De guo — virtuous.

Portugal? Pu tao ya — which roughly translates to “Grape tooth.” How appropriate.

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  Tastes better than it looks

The hutongs have these great little breakfast / snack shops where you can grab food on your way to work. I usually get an egg sandwich (Jiá jī dàn, the literal translation is something like “wrap egg”) for my walk to the subway station. You can also get these with chinese sausage, which I usually avoid (although I’ve had it once or twice due to miscommunication issues).

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  1 RMB = US$ 0.125 — the egg sandwich is the third one from the top

The shop has a lot more on the menu, I’m trying to branch out as my language skills (and digestive system) improve.

Man tou pian

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  Coming to a Pizza Hut near you?

This is the vegetarian’s chuan — same seasoning and preparation, but made with bread instead of meat. Kind of like garlic bread on a stick.

Da yao zi

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  Balls on a stick

Sheep testicles, cooked chuan style. You’re better off not thinking about what it is while you eat it. The consistency is fine, similar to liver or kidney — but I’ll stick to the regular chuan.

Update 8/21: It turns out that this was mistranslated — it’s actually sheep kidney. Sheep testicles are common on the menu though, but I have yet to try it