tbaroundtheworld

When I was last in Beijing I had taken a quick trip to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City before catching a plane to Spain. I didn’t have much time and the trip was nothing more than a brisk walk in the sub-zero temperatures, a ride down the subway and the entry to the outer ring of the old palaces. It was fun but I wanted more and I figured that today I’d take in one of the other sites – The Temple of Heaven. The map the concierge gave me showed it as a straight shot with one left turn and so I left the hotel and headed off in what I supposed to be the proper direction. Given my luck so far that day I guess should have made a plan and then done precisely the opposite of whatever I thought was correct. And as it turned out it would have been a pretty smart thing to do. But at that moment I was determined to turn things around. The first thing I passed was a Starbucks and I considered throwing it all away for an iced Americano but I overcame that urge and planned to stop in at the ...

Yesterday was one of those travel days when everything that can go wrong, did. I started out early leaving my apartment at 6:20AM to make my 8:20 flight. Jiang and I had a great conversation on the way in about his grandfather’s cat apparently it’s very old (17), very fat and unusually smart being able to follow commands just like a dog. I guess my Chinese continues to advance given that I can more or less follow a conversation on something as off the wall as that. Checking in was quick and security the same. I was encouraged at the presence of a plane at the gate and I settled in for the 45 minute wait. A German that I’d seen around Kai Fa Qu sat opposite me dressed all in black save for the piece of shiny silver stretchy cord, the kind you get on Christmas presents, that he was using for a belt. I wasn’t quite sure what to think about that. Around 7:45 the gate attendants showed up around the same time that I heard an announcement about my flight. I didn’t quite catch it and so I che...

We got together for a big work dinner the other night at a very fancy restaurant down by the bay. Its name is Nán Tuó Hǎigǎng which more or less means “southward facing cliffs overlooking the harbor”. Fancy restaurants in China are like nothing else in the world, typically they look much more like a royal mausoleum from the baroque period than a place you’d want to eat dinner. This one was particularly hard on the eyes, coated from floor to ceiling with acres of peach and white veined marble with the occasional oversized chocolate brown fixture added to jazz things up. The ceilings of course were gilt wood panels and the chandeliers had most likely stolen from a palace in pre-revolution France. We walked in across a bridge that spanned mudflats, exposed by the low tide. There were a few people working down in the mud, no doubt gathering their dinner from under the rocks. I joked that it was a good thing that the tide was out as we might not get dinner after all. Being a large party we ...

The road led up a small rise away from the parking area under the shade of tall trees. There were groups of people heading both out and back and still others riding the small blue shuttles swooshing their way to the far corners of the park. Apparently there is something sinister about peace and quiet because although the seasonal hum of cicadas was loud many of these people felt the need to break the natural silence by playing Chinese pop music loudly from their cell phones. Others were not so threatened and walked along in silence or conversation. It was not as hot as it had been in the previous week and was just barely on the edge of uncomfortable due to the humidity. As the road climbed I began to suspect that we’d be hot by the time we attained the upper reaches of the park. Birds whose sounds I did not recognize chattered in the upper reaches of the trees. Qianshan has been a religious site for Buddhists and Taoists for more than 1000 years, starting in the Tang Dynasty and today ...