tbaroundtheworld

Buster

2011-05-16T15:53:00.004-06:00

We live in a funny kind of town. A thousand years ago, the area was dotted with tiny pueblos, home to the descendants of the Anasazi who built the magnificent stone castles up in the Four Corners area. They were followed by the Spanish who settled the extreme northern edge of their country’s North American empire. A hard scrabble life at the end of El Camino Real in a forgotten colony, their dominion lasted until the westward spread of the American Empire engulfed them in a war that saw little change beside their putative government. Around this time my village gained its name - “Corrales” – home to the stockyards food for Albuquerque a few miles to the south.

During the American Civil War an expedition from Texas rolled in and rolled out, sent packing by a clever rear guard movement executed by Union volunteers from Colorado. Their supplies destroyed, they had nothing to do but shake the white dust off of their coats and slink back down the road to await their final destruction in 1865. Then the valley had a long run as a home to small farms – fruits and vegetable and alfalfa – a flourish maintained by an influx of Italian and French immigrants who saw the climate as a bit like their own. Corrales fell into a comfortable slumber and stayed the same through the first two thirds of the twentieth century before seeing a third rejuvenation via a colony of hippies and artists. It was the perfect place, slightly off the beaten path, funky enough to pass muster and yet accessible.

The ‘70s and ‘80s saw one last transition, this time to suburbia - home to people who wanted a little land around their house and didn’t mind a couple of mobile homes on their street. A few enclaves popped up, not gated but still exclusive enough that the people in them wanted to remake the place in the image of the one they left. Only this time they wanted they wanted the extras – a horse or two, some chickens, a goat and maybe a burro. It almost goes without saying that they wanted a few dogs too and the ability to defend their right to let those dogs bark all day long. Those of us not quite bitten by the “return to nature with privileges” bug, call this “The Kit.”

My retirement has created lots of nice opportunities to enjoy the high life. The village is laced with irrigation ditches and associated roads, which allows us to take great walks during the more temperate months, enjoying the scenery, the trees, the sounds of the flowing water and the wildlife. We have a great population of birds and critters and in many cases the denizens of The Kit bump right up against the paths we use to walk to the post office or the coffee shop. We don’t leave home without a pocket full of horse cookies and dog biscuits and we’ve developed a lot of friends along the way. A big fat brown Lab greets us just up the street if she isn’t passed out in her pasture. A guy at the end of the block has four horses that see us coming and line up for a treat. Coming and going. One horse lives alone in a pasture that is choked with burdocks; he stops by for a treat. But our favorite is a burro that lives about a mile down the acequia - central irrigation canal. He has two giant pastures that frame an overly built home set a good distance back from the ditch. Sometimes he’s there, other times not, choosing instead to stand in the shade of one of the trees that ring the house or to hole up in his barn. We’ve heard that he was rescued from somewhere out in the badlands and that the companion he used to have died only recently. We’ve taught him to come to our whistle and when he hears us, he does - braying and squealing all the way from some remote corner of his domain.

One Sunday afternoon we decided to pay him a visit. We loaded up our pockets with apple and oat cookies and started off, passing the beggar horses at the end of the street. When we arrived at his pasture he was there, but pretty far off in the distance. A loud whistle pricked up his ears but also woke up his owner’s dog, starting it barking. A human head popped up over the backyard shrubs and we knew we were being observed. Like anybody doing something dodgy, we shuffled around trying to look innocent. In the eyes of our burro friend, we were the afternoon treat. And he did something he’d never done before – he started running and braying as loud as he could.

His owner apparently didn’t like this diversion of his affection because she started yelling at him.

“Buster, you come back here!”

“Right now Buster!”

“Buster, get back here!”

To which Buster brayed even louder and ran even faster.

We were doubled over with laughter at this scene. If it wasn’t ridiculous enough for someone to expect a burro to understand English, it was certainly beyond the pale to expect him to stop what he was doing and listen to her direction. Especially where a meal was involved. Buster just kept coming and yelling as fast and as loud as he could.

We emptied our pockets after discretely leading him to a corner of his pasture where we could be screened by some pine trees. The owner stood there peering over her bushes, shielding her eyes from the sun and no doubt wondering why Buster was so interested. I understand her feelings - I doubt I would like someone feeding my horses over the back fence. But then I’ve taken the time to build a second level of containment to prevent that. Call it a rationale, but she can hardly expect soft hearted humans to ignore someone as compelling as Buster.

Heading home.

2011-04-06T10:19:00.003-06:00

We had a most unusual driver on our last trip to the airport. The weather had changed to rain – the first bad day we’d had over the entire trip. Sometimes travel planning just works out that way and it’s especially nice in a country like China where, unlike the great cities of Europe, there isn’t a lot to do indoors. Fewer museums than you might imagine. We packed up, checked out and asked the doorman to get us a cab. A red one pulled up, fourth tier in the Shanghai Taxi Quality Spectrum but it was what it was. The driver got out – on the short side with shoulder length hair, dressed all in black and sporting gold metallic painted inch-long fingernails on both hands. We spent the ride to Pudong alternately gagging on the overwhelming stench of cigarette smoke and theorizing about this guy’s night job.

Check in was a breeze as it always is, far better than the olden days when you’d have to stand around waiting until the gate agents would march out in single file, identical in their prim little blue uniforms. Security was another story when once again I got pulled aside for additional checking by the duty supervisor. I replaced my old passport last fall when the visa company told me that mine was in such bad shape that sooner or later I would be denied entry. I was sorry to see the old one go, what with dozens of stamps and two clumps of supplementary pages. My badge of honor, being retired. But the crisp new one was nice at least until I tried to enter Beijing last November and it took two levels of supervision to allow me in. I assumed it must have been a shock to their immigration system between many, many entries and exits, a cancelled residence visa, a new business version and an altogether new identification number. I had no problem leaving the country at the end of that trip or entering on this one so I was a bit taken aback when the guard invited me over to wait with him by the duty desk. I asked him if there was a problem and he smiled and said, “No” which of course was not true. I started to explain the story of my old one, at first messing up the Chinese word for the document, but he continued to smile and suggested that perhaps someone had the same number as I did. The international incident didn’t last long and I was on my way.

Having survived the punishing trip over in coach, I treated us to upstairs business class on the 747, in my mind the ultimate flying experience. Never mind the lack of overhead storage (which requires you to hand over your bag to the flight attendant at the top of the stairs) riding up there is so peaceful and pleasant that it almost makes 11 hours in an aluminum tube tolerable. We settled in across from a what was clearly a newbie business traveler, a short guy with a bad case of overcompensation who started the trip by begging the person next to him to switch with his manager from down the aisle and ended with stealing the menus no doubt to impress his wife with the wine choices. As we got going he downed 4 Rum and Cokes and passed out, depriving me of my mid-flight amusement. It also meant he stopped given a “High Five” to his colleague who for some reason visited the bathrooms 6 times on this trip. After food and wine I watched a heart-wrenching movie called “The Way Back” coming to actual tears when the female lead died. I can’t recall a more poignant movie in any film, even “Old Yeller” and I was slightly sorry that I had subjected myself to that grief. I was also glad it was dark in the cabin.

After bouts of sleeping and eating Chinese Oreo Wafer Sticks we made a right turn along our Pacific coast at Cape Mendocino just as the sun was coming up. It was a glorious display of sunrise colors, with Lassen Peak silhouetted against a broad brush streak of red, orange and blue. We were heading for an early arrival, nice for those departing in San Francisco, not so great for us as it meant an additional hour to kill while we waiting for our 3:40 PM departure to Albuquerque. In the end it didn’t matter because US Customs wasn’t open so we ended up sitting on the plane for an extra half hour. I guess they like to sleep in on the weekends.

After doing some rearranging we checked our bags in order to be free of them. We had a plan to kill the layover in some creative manner other than sitting around the Red Carpet Lounge. Today we planned to ride the BART into the city to have a look around. Of course we had no idea where to go being foreigners and all so we bought tickets to the Embarcadero station figuring it was as good a choice as any. And besides I had a faint recollection of it being a cool destination in spite of the fact that the station agent behind the bullet-proof glass told us it was a 30 minute walk from “everywhere.” Unperturbed, the train came and we left, still wondering if the $32 it was going to cost us was worth the gain. The price alone was quite a shock given that we’d spent no more than 80 cents on the most expensive subway ride in China the week before.

The train turned out to be even more of a surprise. It was slow, dirty and unappealing in every way. We’d been riding glistening spaceships at 250 MPH through the countryside, now we were on a dingy barge chugging through stinky tunnels and waiting just north of Daly City while a crew cleared the tracks of what (judging by the smell) turned out to be a flattened skunk. I know the system is old, and the ones I’d been riding were new, but I couldn’t help feeling second class in comparison and wondered if this was just an example of how far our wonderful country had slid.

We emerged at Embarcadero in front of a closed Starbucks. There was another one across the street that was open so we went and bought coffee and a maple scone for an energy boost. It got me thinking about the Starbucks strategy of building competing stores within eyesight of each other rather than losing a sale to a competitor. Sitting in a window nook next to a German couple with a map spread out on their table, we watched a steady stream of hiking tourists, jogging zealots and hipsters on single-speed bikes. The best in class might have been the relatively normal looking woman picking up half-smoked cigarettes and putting them in her pocket. It was only 9 AM and we were freezing, no doubt due to transoceanic exhaustion, but the relative lack of dress for most of the people was surprising.

Coffee finished we strolled down to the ferry docks admiring the homeless passing their morning wrapped up in cardboard and sleeping in the doorway to the Peet’s coffee shop. Another thing we’d not seen in a long time, and certainly not in any of the cities we’d just left. A hippie street fair was setting up, entertained by a very capable trio playing be-bop. The public toilets were all out of service and judging from the smell unusable even if they were working. We strolled around, caught a little sunshine and headed back to the station. On the way downstairs the urine smell was almost unbearable and judging from the stains on the walls, a regular feature. In all the stations and underpasses I’ve walked through in every major city in China, I’ve never been subjected to such a stench. There is something to be said for a decent system of public toilets I guess.

I decided to try and figure out how to recharge our BART cards rather than buying new. Of course I could have simply opted for two $10 tickets and made an $8 donation to the system. While they might have dedicated it to cleaning the walls, I wanted to make use of the $1.90 that remained on both tickets as a matter of principle. I finally did after a couple of false starts and was amazed that the default simply put another $20 on your card which you could then reduce in $1 or 5¢ increments. Trust me when I tell you that it takes almost forever to reduce $21.90 to $8.10 using only those two denominations. Once done we were back on the train and home at the airport in less time than it took to solve the ticket challenge.

The rest of the afternoon was spent dozing and eating Pepperidge Farm cookies in the lounge. I have to say that I wish I’d explored the BART option on any of my long layovers in the past. When I began traveling to China, there was a 12:40 flight that left which meant only a few hours of wasted time and in some cases a mad dash to catch it. Then it was rescheduled to 1:40 and finally to 3:40, both of which meant countless hours trying to stay awake. While it’s relatively easy to get in and out of Albuquerque, sometimes you do pay the price due to a lack of flights. On many occasions I considered catching a ride on a different airline or going home through another city. But both of those options meant changing planes and multiple flights and any time you add complexity to your itinerary it means the odds of a problem increase. So rather than an unplanned night in Phoenix or Denver, I simply wasted time sitting around eating and watching the clock. Today was no different.

Eventually though our time rolled up and we were on the Barbie Jet for the last leg. Our fair city was being treated to 50 MPH winds and blowing dust so our landing was a bit rocky. We gathered our bags and got in the car and paid our parking tab. The gal collecting the fee asked where we were coming from and told us that we held the record for the day.

When I was a kid I used to go to Florida every year with my dad. The thing that struck me then and has continued across the years and the miles is how different everything seems when you return from being away. On those trips, it would seem like I’d left in the winter and returned to a leafy spring. It was like that today, driving down the road to our village the Cottonwoods were beginning to green up and the Elms were covered in their insidious crop of tiny lime colored seed pods. Turning onto our road, you could see the results of the wind – tiny branches and leaves littered the road surface. We pulled into our drive and let out our old dog Teddy who about turned himself inside out with convulsive doggy joy. There are few things better in life than a dog that’s happy to see you. Out back the horses were staring at the house, wondering if we would be dumb enough to throw them a second dinner. As good as it is to see the world; it’s always great to get back home.

A birthday abroad

2011-04-05T09:56:00.007-06:00

Through no plan of my own, My Lovely Wife’s birthday happened to fall on our final day in China. This was a nice turn as I had managed to miss her previous two. Little milestones like these are important to a romantic like me, and so I was happy that the string of misses was broken. And in such a nice way.

We started the day with another leisurely departure. A big breakfast meant to forestall the need for lunch and a taxi ride into town, my concession that our vacation was finally wearing me down. Sometimes the thought of a long walk to the subway station is reason enough to pay for a much easier ride in a car. Today’s taxi driver thought he was clever, zigzagging through the city streets in order to jack up the fare. It was obvious to me what was going on, and confirmed when he dropped us off on the south side of Yu Gardens, the touristy shopping district in the only remaining old district in Shanghai. The cost was almost double what it should have been, but still only an extra four dollars in our currency. Getting an unexpected tour in a cab is one of those things that are hard to address in a tough second language. I suppose I could have called him a thief, but honestly – if those extra 30 RMB made his day, perhaps it was one of those karma contributions that will pay off for me somewhere down the road.

I paid up and got out into a maelstrom of people on the street trying to interest us in their wares – bags, watches, DVDs. I got into my standard response of “Bu yao” until one of them started mocking me by repeating it over and over. I looked at him and smiled and laughed. Who is the joke really on when he’s not getting a cent of my money?

Our first stop was Pearl City, home to my old friend necklace stringing friend Anna. My friend Matt had discovered her via a recommendation of some anonymous lounge dweller at the Hongqiao Renaissance back in 2006. Over the course of our 3 years of work here, our core project team had built her business beyond anything she would have ever expected. Every trip to town meant a visit with Anna, and in the end the recommendations started echoing back to us from people who had heard third and fourth hand and somehow got the idea that they had discovered her. Today we had a few gifts in mind and I wanted something special for My Lovely Wife. We took the stairs and found her busy at work stringing away. After exchanging pleasantries we got down to shopping and she went to work on our choices. I needed some additional cash and she directed me to an ATM that she said was near “the number one gate” which I assumed meant one of the doors. I went downstairs not fully understanding where the particular “gate” was so I asked one of the ladies working behind the gold counters. She wasn’t much help, more or less gesturing that I should go across the street. We went outside and down to where I knew a machine used to be – it was gone, another victim of the constant urban renewal that rules this place. I went back into Pearl City and using my iPhone as a translator, asked another girl. She laughed and pointed over my right shoulder – it was right there by the door. Flush again we went back upstairs and settled up, taking time to take some photos and say goodbye.

I love the old city; it’s probably one of the last relatively authentic pieces left. While it is overloaded with tacky tourist shops, there are sections which are fun to visit. We stopped at a store that specializes in carved Mammoth tusks and admired a beautiful carving of running horses, displayed in the window. On some trip in the past I’d been invited into this shop to discuss that very piece. Tea was offered along with an assurance that the government regulations denying export of these treasures could be overcome. I was tempted, but left empty handed on that occasion. We wandered through an area that I call “the mineral street” where all the stalls offer products of the Earth – geodes, jade, fossils and amber.

I had a single destination in mind today, the Bird, Fish and Insect Market. Leaving the last neighborhoods of the old city behind, we made our way to Tibet Road and found the entrance. I’d stumbled upon this place on one of my wanderings many years ago and while it represents the worst of man’s inhumanity towards our animal friends, I just can’t resist visiting. It is such an anachronism in this modern city, probably the only place where a smidgen of traditional China remains among the gleaming skyscrapers and fancy villas. A fancy new façade had been added to the old structure, suggesting to me that my worries of its demise were unfounded. We walked in a spent a good hour looking at all the caged animals – wild birds from the tropics and the steppes, grimy little kittens that will never find a home, giant goldfish, pans of crawling mealworms whose purpose was a topic of discussion, and finally the crickets. The Chinese love to have songbirds in their homes, and so mist netting is a popular if illegal sport. Chinese men love cricket fighting and today the stalls were crowded with men carefully prodding prospective combatants into action with the spilt and mashed end of a blade of grass. I’m sure there are good and bad bugs, but those nuances escaped my untrained eye. Judging from the intensity of the buyers though, there must be subtleties that will mean success or failure in the ring. We walked along watching, the sound of insects singing overpowering our senses.

The Shanghai Antiquities Market lies across the street and we made our way over. It’s not much different that the Beijing version, being stocked with thousands of identical artifacts. I stopped at one stall to negotiate some trinket with a young lady. She looked at My Lovely Wife and produced a hair brush. With a somewhat sheepish smile, she asked My Lovely Wife if she could brush her hair. It seemed we’d encountered a new, more intimate version of the now famous “have your picture taken with a westerner” activity. My Lovely Wife turned her head and allowed the girl to brush out the ends. But that wasn’t what she really wanted – she wanted to brush her bangs. My Lovely Wife graciously allowed this too. The girl thanked her with a big smile. It was getting cold and the weather seemed to be changing.

We caught a cab to Xintiandi for another bout of coffee and tapas – fried baby artichokes, pork pate and skillet sautéed chicken this time around. The perfect birthday lunch. Another cab ride back across town and our vacation was pretty much behind us. All that remained was to pack and prepare for the long ride home. Outside the weather had gone downhill as predicted – a long line of misty fog rolled in across the delta of the Yangtze.

A morning at Expo and an afternoon on the Subway

2011-04-02T06:24:00.006-06:00

It’s been a solid 3 years since I spent any real time wandering around Shanghai and I’d forgotten how much I really like the place. Xi’an is my favorite city in China because it wraps you up in warm blanket of history, culture and a comfortable pace. It’s an easy city to visit and there is a lot to do. My time living over here was spent in the north, where life really doesn’t offer much. It’s cold, it’s hard and it’s often bleak. I came to really like Beijing though as I spent a lot of transit time there on my way to and from the US. And when you get to know your way around a city, it finds a place in your heart. The capital city though was tough to love as it comes across as crowded and stark, a tribute I think to the generations of hard men who built and ruled the place. But being here in Shanghai after a long absence, I was instantly reminded of what a special place it is. Sophistication, excitement and a comfortable pace, not unlike what you might find in Paris or Madrid. Here you don’t visualize the power of the military parades or a line of imperial courtiers walking slowly past lines of subordinate serfs. Here you think of drinking Gin and Tonic on the veranda of 1930’s club set in a garden, men in white jackets and ties, women in shimmering silk. Erhu music playing softly in the background while a fan spins slowly overhead. Shanghai is a city built for pleasure.

The city received a nice tune-up courtesy of the government and their desire to put a fresh face on the place for the 2010 Expo. Between the beautiful lights on the freshly scrubbed buildings of the Bund, and the addition of dozens of new subway lines, the city is even more appealing now than when I was spending so much time there. I have to admit I was a bit covetous of the new Line 10 which would have taken me from my old place of work to the heart of the French Concession in a matter of minutes vs. the hours I used to spend in a taxi. Well-lit, sparkling clean and fast, there are few things better to be said about a subway system. While I like Beijing’s system, it’s always crowded and the transfers are a murderous slog of stairs and broken escalators. The Shanghai designers used their noggins and built a host of parallel horizontal and vertical lines which puts you never more than a couple blocks from a station. It also means that there are many more choices when traveling east to west and north to south so the main center line is never as bad as it is up north. It’s an easy system to like.

Our first few days had been heavily loaded with travel and attractions. To counteract the sense of exhaustion, we decided to keep our first day here leisurely and simple. The China pavilion was the last attraction still open at Expo so after a slow breakfast we left the hotel around 11 and caught a taxi across town. The streets were not busy and we made it there in no time. Now I had a plan to wander around the grounds, I had no desire to wait in what had been reported on-line to be a 1.5 hour queue. All I wanted to do was take some photos of the other pavilions and have a stroll. It wasn’t clear how to do that upon arrival so we simply fell in behind a small group who happened to be walking past the lines to buy entry tickets. They were waved through the security checkpoint, we were not. The guard asked for a ticket, I told him that we just wanted to walk around and had no intention of visiting the pavilion. He told me to turn around, go back a block, take a right and walk some more. I didn’t like the sound of any of that and in any event was in no mood for that amount of walking so we thanked him and turned back to where we had been dropped off. There didn’t seem to be a clear solution to do what I wanted to do so after a brief conversation we decided to bite the bullet and brave the China pavilion on the off chance that it might offer a way in. As we threaded our way through the mostly empty serpentine crowd control barriers, scalpers offered to sell us entry passes. I waved them off, knowing full well that their wares were almost certainly frauds. I made the purchase and we headed towards the entrance having no idea whether we were in for a quick tour or an endless wait. Judging from the hundreds of identically dressed school students on class tours the latter seemed likely but we kept moving and in only the time it took to walk from the ticket booths to the building entrance, we were inside. Along the way we provided entertainment for the school children answering what seemed like an endless series of “Hello” and “Where are you from?”

Our forward progress was finally stopped once inside as people were funneled into a queue for an elevator ride. Apparently you start at the top and work your way down. Even this inconvenience was slight – no more than 10 minutes – and following being crammed into the car and a quick ascent we were let out in front of a theatre. I wasn’t really interested in seeing whatever it was they were offering so we skirted the crowd and entered a hall called The River of Wisdom. It was the best decision we’d made in a long time. This floor was dedicated to the history of China and featured a 300 by 30 foot animated rendition of a famous 12th century Song Dynasty scroll called ”A Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival” by the famous artist, Chang Tse-duan. This modern version was done by the same artist who played a significant role in the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and it was wondrous.

Lining the outer wall in a darkened gallery, a laser rendition of river water lapped at your feet. All the characters in the scroll went about their daily business as we watched from the far side of the river. Boats docked along the far shore, people sat in tea shops, a man rode a horse through the square, a child danced in a courtyard. Even a row of camels entered the town through the main gate, bringing wares from some bazaar far down the Silk Road. The scenes cycled from day to night every few minutes, with lamps appearing in the windows of houses and red lanterns being lit in alleys. Tiny ancient people stood on the far shore, looking across at us. It was superb and I think it would be easy to spend an entire day there just picking out the details. This alone made the trip here worthwhile.

At the back of the gallery, a people-mover carried visitors through a hall called “China’s National Treasures” which turned out to be a 15 second ride past the bronze chariot that normally resides at the Terracotta Warriors Museum in Xi’an. We’d seen the stand-in version three days prior, so that loop was now closed. We exited the ride and headed downstairs through a hallway of lofty green lit trees that opened up to another gallery lined with tall glass rods that changed from crystal clear to blue to green. An artistic representation of rice fields. The floor below was dedicated to green energy and not all that interesting. At least not following the River of Wisdom. It occurred to me that nothing else in the place could possibly compare. You could see the Expo grounds out the windows and from this vantage it was clear that the place was no longer open. My plan to wander around was dashed, but it didn’t matter because the visit to this pavilion had turned out so well. We caught the exit escalator down through a huge circular hole in the bottom of the building, lined with pink water lilies. Water cannons shot intermittent streams into the air, forming a wall of ever changing designs. At the bottom we bought a Coke and sat down for a brief rest. Within 2 minutes of being there a middle-aged woman came over and gave me that famous look. I invited her to sit between us and her husband took our picture. While the staring a gawking was certainly less here, the desire for a photo of the westerners never seems to wane.

We took the subway from the grounds to Xintiandi, the upscale Shikumen (stone ghetto) conversion done in the late 1990’s by the architect famous for Boston’s Faneuil Hall. It’s a wonderful place to shop and to grab a cup of coffee. The people watching is fantastic, being a mix of fancy Chinese and expats. It was mid-afternoon and we thought lunch might be a nice way to end our day out so we picked a “fusion tapas” restaurant and asked for a table. I told the greeter that we didn’t want to be seated near smokers so she invited us inside where there were no other diners. We grabbed a table by a window and ordered a big bottle of San Pellegrino and three dishes – chicken kabobs, baked stuffed rigatoni and slices of barbecued pork with mustard glaze. It was the perfect meal on a perfect day.

The day ended with a subway ride and an exploratory walk through the hotel neighborhood trying to find the best route between the two. Before emerging above ground though I took My Lovely Wife for a stroll through Shanghai’s version of a knock-off market. Xinyang Market used to be located in a nice park along the tony Huaihai Lu on the other side of town. The government cleaned them out in 2006 and they relocated here. I’ve spent a lot of time in this market, buying this and that, and haggling with the vendors. Today it was pretty much abandoned and the sellers seemed to barely have the energy to pester us. I don’t know what happened or why it came to be this way, but I have to admit I was a bit saddened by it. Another one of those fun memories gone.

After a walk that was longer than expected, we found ourselves back at the hotel and in the lounge, listening to the same tape loop that Federico, my Marriott floor manager friend from Costa Rica and I discussed so long ago in Beijing. He told me then that I would have to hack into some server deep in a bunker somewhere to get a copy. On that occasion I chose instead to have a glass of wine and enjoy the memories of the day. I made the same choice this time too.

Travel Day - off to Shanghai

2011-04-02T04:09:00.008-06:00

Lily and the airport ticket agent had a nice time laughing at my Chinese. I asked her why - confused since she is always complimenting my on my ability – and she told me that while I am capable, I have a habit of using too many words. First time I’ve heard that. We said goodbye to her for probably the last time before entering security. I handed her an envelope with a nice gift for her impending wedding. I’ve never tipped her on previous visits and I thought this was a nice opportunity to make up for that with a nicer gift.

Our flight to Shanghai was uneventful aside from half a plane full of American students and their handlers. Some sort of band or orchestra judging from their carry-on luggage which was a wide variety of instrument cases. I had an intimate encounter with one of them when I was bent over in front of my seat on the plane and one of the youngsters decided that he wanted my space in the overhead bin. He was trying to jam his case into the spot that I had momentarily vacated when I stood up, cracking my head on the bottom of his French Horn. I wasn’t happy about that and he sensed it, apologizing profusely. I wonder how people think in situations like this – I remove my bag, bend over rifling it and he decides the space is now open so it’s his? I told him my bag was going back to where I had it. He removed his and sat down behind me.

We landed at the most remote gate at Pudong Airport. It was a long, long walk even taking into account the liberal installation of people movers. We decided to take the Maglev Train into town, having had a nice taste of speed on the Luoyang bullet train. This one topped out at 250 MPH making our previous trip pale in comparison; even if this ride only lasted 10 minutes. The 1st class car on this outing held only the two of us.

Our introductory evening in Shanghai was spent in a fast taxi ride across Pudong and under the river followed by a stroll down Nanjing Lu to take in the famous neon lights. I’m sad to say that much of the famous light show is now gone, replaced by more modern and glitzier electronic ads. Another little part of old Shanghai giving way to the Chinese perspective that “newer is better.” It’s not better for me. As we walked along a seemingly never ending crowd of people hawking watches, bags and t-shirts plied their trade. I’d forgotten about this aspect of the country’s leading financial center – the retail assault in any place that tourists visit is endless. I have to admit I was a bit surprised to see the silly rolling skates with spinning lights still being offered up, the same as my visit more than 3 years ago. Apparently this bunch of sellers had not yet met their quota and somewhere in some warehouse, there remains a shipping container of these cheap trinkets.

The improvements on the Bund though were in the right direction and much more to my liking. Cleaned up and re-lit for last year’s Expo, the old buildings looked wonderful and far better than I remembered them. We stood at the railing overlooking the Huangpu River and marveled at the lights of the Pudong waterfront. The Pearl, Jinma and Shanghai Financial towers brightly illuminated with colors and crazy chasing lights. On the river, even more gaudy dinner cruise boats jockeyed for position with unlit river barges delivering cargo to the industrial areas upriver. It was a magical spot.

After another taxi back to the hotel we decided to explore the neighborhood. They’d given us a map when we checked in and I asked the doorman where the local Starbucks was. I was using a bit of Chinese and he asked me if I could speak. I said “yes” and he proceeded to rattle off an explanation. I pointed to the map and he said “two crossroads down the street.” We started walking and ended up walking and walking and walking. As it turned out, our communications wires were completely crossed. I had asked about details on the map, he’d had no idea what I was talking about and so answered the best he could. There was a Starbucks and we did find it but it wasn’t the one we thought it was. It didn’t matter – we had a coffee and spent the rest of the evening people watching and planning our Friday.

The (really) fast train to Luoyang

2011-04-01T06:57:00.007-06:00

There are three major Buddhist grottoes in China. The first, Mogao, is far out in the west and difficult to reach. While supposedly the best due to its extensive collection of unspoiled frescoes, it was often a topic of travel conversation for me but never one that I felt was worth the challenge. Too far, too hard and not much else to justify a day of airport hopping and bus rides. I visited the second site at Yungang near the coal mining city of Datong back in 2010. While not easy to reach its difficulty is due more to the lack of flights than remoteness. It’s only an hour by air from Beijing on a plane that lands, turns around and leaves again until the same time on the next day. Datong turned out to be a nice city with some other attractions that were worth the trip and I was glad to have gone. Besides, my visit there allowed me to complete the Chinese 9 Dragon Screen Hat Trick, a goal I had no idea that I had until I was within walking distance of the other two on one hot afternoon in Beijing. The third site, Longmen lies a few hundred kilometers to the east of Xi’an and since we just happened to be there and within 2 hours by bullet train, going seemed like an obvious choice.

With tickets in hand, we left our hotel early to catch a 10 o’clock train. I was a bit apprehensive about the whole thing, worried not about getting to the city of Luoyang but more about getting from the train station to the grottoes. You never know with these small city attractions in China. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a simple taxi negotiation. Other times it requires wading through “black taxis” that would drag you around to places you’re not interested in, holding you hostage until you buy some trinkets from their uncle’s souvenir factory. Unfortunately, you never know until you get there so I had plenty of food for thought at we wound our way through the morning traffic.

The new train station lies north of the city and while open for business it remains in a state of construction. Our driver had to perform a couple of u-turns in order to figure out how to get up to the entrance. Once inside I was struck by two things – it was a huge cavern of gray marble and it was freezing. Far colder inside than out, as though all that polished stone was sucking what little heat the morning air held. We shopped for chocolate and Oreos and wandered around giving the place the once over. Very trim and efficient, with McDonalds, KFC and a handful of noodle shops under construction on the second floor. There were three little grocery shops on the first level selling local treats along with cheap bai jiu (Chinese tequila) and beer. It made me think that the second and third class cars might offer some interesting companionship. We heard the announcement and went to our gate and queued up only to discover that because we’d purchased our tickets at the old station, we’d be unable to use the automated readers. An attendant opened up a separate gate and punched ours. We took an escalator down to the platform.

It was kind of a joke when we’d made our purchase as we had seats 3 and 4, indicating that there might be no more than us and one other couple in 1st class. As it turned out, there were probably 15 additional people in a car that held 50. The train left on time and we sat back to watch the countryside roll by, cruising most of the time between 120 and 150 MPH. Being elevated and with no sense of proportion it was hard to judge how fast we were actually going. The train was quiet and very smooth.

The route hugged the banks of the Yellow River, one of the big three drainage basins in China, the other two being the Yangtze and Pearl further south. It was hard to see much of anything in the distance – the air pollution was abysmal no doubt due to the coal fired power plants we passed with regularity. I guess all those city wall lights in Xi’an come at a price. A half hour into the trip we passed Huashan, one of the 5 holy mountains of China. Sacred to both the Buddhists and Taoists, its summit is reached by a popular and very difficult trail of chains and boards attached to raw rock faces. The view of sunrise is said to be spectacular. Today it was little more than a craggy and slightly darker outline in the thick gray haze.

Shaanxi province sits atop the loess plateau region of China. Built by eons of windblown silt from the Yellow River, the land is very fertile if irrigated and highly eroded due to the soft nature of the rock formed by the dirt. Local people have used this property of the land to build terraces and cave houses for a millennia. Less popular today than in the past, you can still see ornate brick facades forming the entrances to homes that are completely underground in the tiny villages along the train’s path. Hundreds of older abandoned caves also dot the hills along the route, interspersed with the bright yellow flowers of some spring crop. I’d seen those plants last April in Yunnan but never did figure out what they were. Here they grew in bright green patches on irrigated paddies on the side of just about every eroded gully we passed.

We arrived on time and I was happy to find a genuine taxi stand where a uniformed official called up a car after I gave him our destination. The air here was no better than that in the countryside and the lack of sun provided a moderate temperature. Little chance of sunburn and overheating today. When I’d researched the route from the train station to the grottoes, I did not understand that the bullet train required a new station. Luoyang now has two and this one was on the south side of town and as it turned out at the end of our 6 minute cab ride, no more than 2 or 3 miles. The driver did not use the meter – not an uncommon rip off in tourist traps – and our ride cost 30 kuai, probably 3 times more than it should have. This was the first time I was genuinely ripped off by a cabbie in China, but hardly worth an argument as I imagine this price fixing was simply the way it was here. And who wants to make an enemy for 2 dollars. I told him it was expensive and paid up. He gave us a cheerful goodbye and pointed us on our way. The grottoes entrance turned out to be down at the end of a long retail street built in authentic Tang Dynasty style and featuring all those special artifacts available only in places like this. Today there were two specialties – poorly rendered Tang Dynasty ceramic horses and something called “peony stone”, a black rock with little green florets of what I think was supposed to be some sort of fossilized plant. We ignored the pleas to visit the stores and noodle shops and continued on.

In 493AD Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty moved his capital from Datong to Luoyang and began the carving of the grottoes. The work continued during the Tang (618 – 907AD) and Song (960 - 1127AD) Dynasties. Today there are more than 2000 niches, 2800 steles, 1300 caves and 100,000 individual carvings. Unlike Yungang, this place has been extensively damaged starting with Western artifact collectors in the early 20th century and culminating with rampaging Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Almost all of the carvings at ground level are faceless.

After walking past the entrance and retracing our steps across a field of newly laid sod, we bought our tickets and began the tour. Places like this can impart a wonderful sense of peace and spirituality. That feeling here was a bit disturbed by the loud acoustic guitar music playing from speakers along the path. It was a 30 second tape loop which I recognized as the same music that Air China plays during the mandatory safety briefing before each flight. I was worried that it would be stuck in my head forever, but the challenge of climbing all the steps up to see the art put it out of my mind. The grottoes extend about ½ mile south along the west bank of the Yi River. You walk along this set, cross a bridge and then continue back north along the east side. We climbed and photographed and visited with a nice Aussie couple who were spending 3 weeks backpacking across the country. Despite the vandalism, the statues were wonderful, including a very special lotus flower carving on the roof of one cave and another that featured more than 10,000 four-inch square Buddhas. I’m always amazed at the fact that carvings like these were done in relief, starting at a rock face, continuing into a niche and resulting in a Buddha that stands out from the wall. Up above we could see the original edge of the rock wall.

The centerpiece of Longmen lies at the end of the walk, on a platform at the top of what seems like a thousand steep stairs. Carved during the Tang Dynasty and called Fengxian Temple, it features a 53’ carving of the Vairocana Buddha sitting on a lotus flower and bracketed by four equally spectacular statues of disciples.

All those stairs required a rest so we found and empty bench and plopped down for some water and Oreos. A middle-aged man walked slowly by staring and I knew the look so I asked him if he wanted our photograph. It’s gotten so that I know the drill. He nodded shyly and brought out his camera. His mother appeared off to our side. She was perhaps ninety and certainly no more than 5 feet tall. Dressed in traditional Chinese peasant garb she smiled slightly and nodded and tried to sit down to the right of my lovely wife. I told her “no” and we moved to make room in between us. I told her “Zhongjian” and patted the seat. She sat down and we each put an arm on her shoulder. Her son took our photo and smiled broadly. Grandma thanked us and got up and walked away.

We crossed the river and from there on it was an easy stroll back to the entrance punctuated with photo ops. The next was a middle-aged woman and her husband. Where the previous grandma was reticent, this woman was excited, happy and bubby. Her husband took our photo with Fengxian Temple as the backdrop across the river. She thanked us effusively and went on her way, grinning from ear to ear.

The last picture session was probably the most memorable in my experience of having my picture taken. Done with the park, we found a bench in the shade and settled in to kill some time before heading back to the train station. Three young women were hovering behind us so I asked the question once again. They giggled and agreed and handed their cameras to a young man who appeared out of nowhere. The group swelled to perhaps 8 people and we spent the next 15 minutes cycling young women between the bench seat and standing behind us. The man continued to take pictures, counting “yi er san” with each one. The original young woman came back for a second shot and I figured we were done. No, the man had to have his shot at fame as well. Before leaving one of the women used her best English to say “Welcome to China” and “Welcome to Shaanxi”, the latter comment being amusing as we were now in Henan province. It didn’t matter, everyone’s day was made and we sent them off happy.

We skipped the retail street on the way our, walking instead through the parking lot. At the end of the walk we found a few cabs, some sort of family taxi cartel and they had a brief discussion about who would take us. I asked how much and the answer of “30” confirmed my earlier notion that taxi rides to Longmen are a fixed rate commodity. We agreed and took the 6 minute ride back to the station.

There was an hour to wait and I spent my time using my iPhone to translate the nuances of the schedule sign at the station. I now understand the characters for “platform” and “ticket checking place” and “on time” even though my phone struggled mightily with the character for “minute.” The train arrived on time and much to our surprise the 1st class car was full of people. Unfortunately most of them were men snorting up phlegm and a woman across from us who talked for an hour straight when she wasn’t loudly choking on something. I spent my time watching the train speedometer which topped out at 215 MPH. Out the window, the cave houses and green terraces raced by. I was lucky to sit on the north side for the return trip, and so I was able to see the sun slowly set over wide expanses of the Yellow River, blood red due to the pollution. We arrived a bit early and found Lily waiting for us. The driver was waiting for us in what will no doubt someday be a parking lot. Today it was some sort of heavily rutted dirt construction zone. The drive to town was faster in the afternoon traffic than it had been earlier in the day. It was a rewarding day.

Xi'an Part Two - Warriors and Dumplings

2011-04-01T03:53:00.022-06:00

The first time you visit the Terracotta Warriors you are so in awe of the place that you spend most of your time just soaking in the grandeur. If you have a guide, you try to absorb as much of the historical perspective as you can. Because it is an interesting story. If you are lucky enough to go a second and third time, you’re free to do things like take pictures of faces and details. Go a fourth time and you’re allowed to do whatever you want, like spending time at your favorite spots. You now have a genuine relationship with the place, unlike anything you get in a one-time tour bus visit. I spent my fourth time there wandering around looking at those second and third level details that most people will never see. My Lovely Wife, having had the benefit of my prior stories and hundreds of photographs was essentially an honorary second time visitor – still capable of being awed, but knowledgeable enough to ask deeper questions.

Following a spate of complaints by the local vendors, the government changed the route for walk-in visitors to an upstream swim through the retail area. It meant a slightly longer walk and a few hundred more pleas to buy something. But overall it was a fine spring stroll. My Lovely Wife loved the horse sculpture in the center plaza. The three of us liked the white pigeon sitting on the lead horse’s nose, forcing what looked like cross-eyed concern on the horse’s part. We wandered through all the museums and stopped at the end to visit one of the Mr. Yangs in the gift shop. There were not so many visitors buying books from him today so he sat there looking sour. We left after three hours, stopping on the way out to buy a bag of the peanut treat I love so much. It’s prepared by repeatedly pounding shelled peanuts with a big wooden mallet until they form thin little sheets that look like mica. It’s sweet and it tastes like peanut brittle without the tooth damaging hard candy.

We took a stop at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda for a lesson in Buddhist history ala a display of Buddha’s life done in hundreds of pieces of jade, all in different colors. From there it was on to the Grand Mosque for a stroll through the gardens. I’d been there once before and was not terribly impressed but today it took on a new life for me, again no doubt due to traveling with someone fresh to the place. The turquoise blue tiles of the buildings, still holding their bright colors after 500 years, glowed slightly in the late afternoon light. The main prayer hall was a sea of identical blue prayer rugs that stretched far into the darkness at the back of the room. Authorized by an emperor more than 1300 years ago, this place started as the center of the religious community for Arab traders who worked the Silk Road and chose to stay here with their Chinese brides. Today it is still the center of the descendents of that community. A stroll down the “butcher’s street” on the way out, rimmed by tables covered with all manner of beef and sheep parts allowed you for a moment to feel like you were there in the past. I always expect a brace of camels to appear, leaving town for points west on the shores of the Roman Empire.

After an hour wasted in Starbucks waiting for my favorite restaurant to open, we went off to De Fa Chang for their famous 18 specialty dumpling banquet. This would be my second time there and I vowed not to make the same mistake I’d made on my first visit with my daughter Gwynn. In that instance we stuff ourselves on what turned out to be the introductory courses – two pairs of fried dumplings and two dozen boiled, only to discover that the fancy course came last. This time there was no problem, the specialty dumplings came first – tomato, walnut, mushroom, seafood, spicy chicken, pork, duck, rabbit and lamb. We were able to enjoy those and leave most of the subsequent courses behind. I never did figure out how they come up with 18 as the number. There were 15 of the specials, 2 of the fried, two dozen of the boiled and a couple of cold dishes that had nothing to do with dumplings. All that and a Coke apiece. Who knows and it really didn’t matter. It was enough food for four.

Dinner over, we headed down the road south of the Bell Tower and paid a visit to a very upscale and completely empty mall. I learned something new there – if you want a good bathroom in China, just find the shopping center that features Vuitton and Prada and you will be rewarded. Our last stop was a walk on the city wall just after sundown. No visit to Xi’an can be complete without it. In the daylight the wall is home to Chinese and foreigners on rented bicycles, plying the 14 kilometer circle of the old city. The Xi’an wall is the only one in China that is in good repair and completely intact. At night the clientele changes to couples strolling arm in arm. Between the soft spring breeze and the beautiful lights of the guard towers, you’re transported to another time and place. The noise and the bustle of the city are left behind and you’re free to think about the place and what brought you there. Below people dance to traditional music in the park along the city moat and roller skaters turn circles on a small and unlit rink next to the south gate. You can even overlook the fact that you have to cross a deadly traffic circle twice to visit the place.

There was a bit of a wait for a taxi but we ended up with a driver that was very excited to discover our nationality. He said he loved America and proceeded to recite the name of every state that he knew. It wasn’t clear whether he’d been keeping track of the homes of his previous fares or if he simply wanted us to know that he was a master of our place names. It didn’t matter, I couldn’t think of anything better at that moment than a geography lesson delivered by a cabbie in a place so far from home. ........................................................................................................... ............................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................ ..........................................................

And on to Xi'an.

2011-03-31T03:18:00.006-06:00

I finally took the time to understand where the VIP check-in desk is in Beijing. After standing in dozens of lines and being denied by the kiosks, I figured I may as well ask. So I did and we found it and it was fast. No time like today to learn something you’ll probably never use again. After a short stay in the lounge and a quick flight during which I completely confounded the flight attendant when she tried to tell me that I was not allowed to have my bag at my feet (“Exit row regulation”, “You cannot have it there”, “It must go overhead”, “Excuse me, I will leave now and come back later) we arrived in my favorite of favorite Chinese cities – Xi’an. Lily, my favorite guide and honorary daughter, was there to meet us. I was happy to finally introduce her to My Lovely Wife.

I’ve made it a point on my last two visits here to stop at the Hanyangjing Museum on the way into town from the airport. A wonderfully produced introduction to a Han Dynasty royal tomb, Hanyangjing is a great way to prepare for your subsequent visit to the Terracotta Warriors. Here, the soldiers are tiny and not unique but fascinating in their own way. Row upon row of little naked armless men standing buried in two millennia of dust, their silk robes and articulated wooden arms long since gone. In the imperial barns, an endless supply of pottery dogs, goats, chickens cows sheep and horses stand waiting forever to be used in battle or served up in a banquet. I just love the place and each visit presents something new.

We came with a plan to spend Wednesday on the high speed bullet train to Luoyang. The famous Longmen Grotto was the last holy Buddhist site in China on my list of things to do. For whatever reason I’d not managed to make it there and Luoyang never did rate a visit unto itself. Being this close – 1.5 hours by high speed rail – I figured this was as an opportunity presenting itself. So after Hanyangjing, it was off to the old railway station. While the fast train leaves from the new Xi’an Bei (north) complex, there was no easy route to there from the airport so we had to go into town. Mid-spring in Shaanxi Province is splendid. Although the pollution heavily filters the sun, we had a hint of a blue sky and comfortable temperatures in the mid 60’s. The drive in was busy but not terribly so for mid-afternoon. The train station was another story – after an interesting trip into the underground parking garage (dark, damp, confusing – all the things I love about parking in China) we made our way into a crowd that can only be described as thousands of scared people trying to escape some invading army. I’ve been in some tight crowds in China, many of them aggressive with the pushing and shoving, but this one might have been the record. Even worse than the entrance tunnel to the Forbidden City, the time during which a young woman didn’t like being separated from her friend so she grabbed her arm and jerked her between My Lovely Wife and me. Even though we were walking arm in arm. Everyone jammed into a space perhaps 20 feet deep by 100 feet. A long line of ticket windows. It was noisy and very oppressive and nothing more than a typical day at the station and a wonderful introduction to average urban life for My Lovely Wife. Lily went to the information counter to understand which queue we should be in. We stood towards the back of the mob and endured our most recent round of staring. She came back and told us that we’d be better off waiting until Wednesday to buy the tickets at the new station. She felt that the queues were too long but I didn't want to take a chance on the trains being sold out. I sensed an opening and started asking people around us what line they were in. While it appeared to be chaos, there were some patterns and I had a sense that the queue we needed - #27 – was one of the shorter ones. Sure enough, ours was being swamped by neighboring lines so I pushed the three of us through and positioned us about 5 people out. Chinese behind us, sensing some leadership talent fell in as well. In no time we were at the window and after a couple of discussions about the actual date of our travel, we fought our way back out through the crowd, tickets in hand.

I like using Lily as a guide here because she is so knowledgeable about the culture and the history. She works as a contractor for Mr. Lee who owns a small tour company. After being introduced to Mr. Lee in 2009 by my friend Matt, I’ve steered a lot of my fellow workers his way and from there a word of mouth business has mushroomed. Lily told me that I had probably single-handed made his company a success and because of that she was going to buy us a local cuisine dinner at a restaurant near our hotel. After checking in and sending our driver on his way, we walked a couple of blocks down Kejiyi Lu to the place she had in mind. Shaanxi cuisine relies heavily on mutton, breads and chiles. While not as spicy as Sichuan food, it holds its own. The most famous dish is Pao Mo, a soup made of chunks of lamp, onions, broth and greens served over little bits of dense, unleavened bread. Because Xi’an was the start of the Silk Road, there is a strong Muslim influence on the food. This restaurant for example, was hallal, or Muslim “kosher.” To begin the meal you start with an empty bowl and two disks of the special bread, one enough though as it is remarkably hard and heavy. You spend a half hour tearing the bread into tiny pieces, about the size of your little fingernail. Legend says that if you make the pieces too large, the cook will know that you are not a local person and so will ruin your meal. Once done with the tearing, the waitress hands you a slip of paper with a number on it that corresponds to the finer details of your soup (beef vs. lamp, amount of broth varying from lots to none) and she takes the bowl back to the kitchen where the final preparations are made. What emerges is a hearty, fragrant stew of vegetables, meat and mushy bread. Truly workingman’s food for a cold day. In addition to the Pao Mo we shared some skewers of dry braised lamb, a plate of cold sesame noodles, jellied lotus root and another Xi’an specialty, Rou Jia Mo, tiny “hamburgers”, two little round rolls stuffed with spicy lamb and chiles.

It was grand meal and I felt that I had finally had a worthy introduction to the local fare, something I had somehow managed to miss on all my previous visits. After setting up a meeting time with Lily, My Lovely Wife and I bid her adieu and we went on to Starbucks for coffee and an “American” brownie. I had another one of those great China moments with the baristas, this time over one coffee being on ice and one being hot. The Chinese word for heat is “re” and it’s pronounced in a way that westerners cannot repeatedly master. It makes use of throat musculature that we simply don’t have. I had all the girls behind the counter staring at me with the most concerned looks (when they weren’t outright laughing) and trying to catch my drift. Eventually I just said “cold and not cold” and brought the impasse to an end. We finished our night listening to the canned jazz music, enjoying our coffee and making plans for the next day.

A weekend in Beijing

2011-03-31T02:56:00.006-06:00

We decided to spend our days in the capital city riding the subway to a few of the canonical spots. I’d hoped that the trains would not be mobbed (it being after the morning rush on a Saturday) but of course I was wrong – My Lovely Wife’s first exposure to public transportation in China was a cheek to jowl mob on the train from Guomao to Tiananmen East. While not how I wanted it to be, at least it was authentic.

Our initial day here broke down into a handful of experiences. While it’s always fun to think and talk in detail about the sites we visit, sometimes there are general themes that are more interesting. “Meta Stories” if you will. Here are a few:

• The Myth of Subway Travel. I’m a big fan of subway travel, it’s easy, it’s fast and you never have to sit in traffic. I even have an application on my iPhone that lets me plot a station by station and line by line route. It doesn’t tell you if there is room on the cars, but at least you have an idea of how long it will take. Part of the myth is that it doesn’t wear you down but this trip proved that this really is untrue – subway travel is great as long as you don’t have to transfer. The Beijing system is incredible, it’s easy to get to just about anywhere in a reasonably short period of time But if you want to leave from Wangfujing and head to the Lama Temple, that route requires three transfers and each one requires a mile of walking and a thousand stairs. At the end of a day of leisurely travel, you’re bone tired and wishing for a seat. Naturally seats are rarely available and when they are, you’re one stop away from home.

• Being a Westerner. I’ve had my picture taken a thousand times in China and I’m used to being stared at. I never fully understood why this is the case, particularly in big cities like Beijing where there are hundreds of thousands of expats and even more tourists. My favorite Xi’an guide Lily explained the pictures – people like to brag to their friends that they met and spent time with foreigners, often embellishing the story to make it sound as though it was a joint day out in the country. Well, despite all the attention I’ve received none of it prepared me for the constant attention My Lovely Wife received. Between men outright staring, women discussing her finer points amongst themselves and people walking into lamp poles, we found ourselves in a maelstrom of gawking. I suddenly knew exactly how Lindsey Lohan feels. The subway was the worst, with people all around us (and below us too) sneaking looks and furtively turning the other way when caught. The best was a group of three – two women and one man who got on the car and stood in front of us. The women were goggle-eyed. The man bemused. The older and shorter of the two women looked up at My Lovely Wife and made a hand motion indicating altitude. I looked at her and said, “Ta hen gao” – she’s very tall. The women were instantly mortified, a state that the man found quite humorous. While they continued with their comments, my comment forced them to whisper behind cupped hands lest I get in on the conversation. When we got off ahead of them and My Lovely Wife said, “Zaijian”, I thought they would die.

• The Hall of Clocks. I’ve been to the Forbidden City five times now, covering just about all of the nooks and crannies. Before my visit last year with my daughter Aidan, I’d done some research about the place and decided to visit a couple of the more obscure spots. The Hall of Clocks was one of these. I’d formed a mind’s eye opinion of the place – a large hall with thousands of clocks ticking and chiming, sort of an Alice in Wonderland spot. When we arrived we were first greeted by a throng of Chinese women squatting in the entry corridor eating oranges and apples and throwing and spitting the peels on the floor. Atypical museum behavior. When we discovered what the Hall really was – a somewhat shabby display of the gaudiest relics of late 18th and 19th century Europe purchased en masse by an emperor who wanted everything western, we were kind of let down. We spent most of our short time there shaking our heads and laughing at ourselves for being so romantic in our expectations. On this trip, My Lovely Wife actually made me spend time exploring the objects and sure enough, it turned out to be pretty interesting. Not cool in the way I wanted it to be and not up to what I’d expected, but very nice in a completely different manner. When I took the time to actually read the notes and peer at the tiny robots and decorations, an engaging history of clock making emerged. I’ll admit I took her there to have a second laugh, and now I have to say I was the one who was really surprised. When at the end of the day I asked her what her favorite site was and she said, “The Hall”, I was happy to hear it. Not quite ready to say it was mine though.

• Olympics Venue. I guess it’s true that you see things through different eyes when you visit places with different people. It was certainly the case with the Hall of Clocks. My first visit to the Olympics Venue was freezing, bleak and depressing and I couldn’t wait to get back on the subway after a couple of required photographs. The Water Cube was in the process of being converted to a mall and the Bird’s Nest was filthy. The promenade was lined with artificial Christmas trees and Barbie’s Christmas Village didn’t belong there in any way shape or form. This time, it was better and we actually got to go into the Water Cube where we were regaled with the sight of hundreds of pasty white Chinese in bathing suits enjoying themselves in the newly opened water park. There were dancing girls on stage and a giant screen TV and people waving long skinny balloons while bobbing in the giant wave pool. How one could stand on the observation platform and not love every minute of that was beyond me. Across the hall though, the diving pool remained and we sat in the stands and just let the spirit of the games wash over us. The overall visit was redemption – you could still feel the positive energy of the sport. And not even the scalper trying to sell me the 30 kuai ticket for 200 or the half hour walk it took to escape the Cube could take that away.

• Yonghegong Lama Temple. The only thing I can say about this place is that if you ever travel to Beijing, you must come here. A visit here takes all the noise and bustle and crowding and staring and washes it all away. A leisurely stroll through here and you can almost bear the thought of getting crammed into a subway car again.

• Face Bar. If it’s possible for a restaurant to be emblematic of your experience in a foreign country, this is it. I have so many wonderful memories of their restaurant in Shanghai. It’s the place I interviewed my replacement and good friend Ben. I remember wondering how so skinny a guy could put away so much food. It’s where I lost my Green Curry Duck to my friend Matt who grabbed it off the tray and dug in before I could rightfully lay claim. My mate Keith told me that it was so romantic that you’d have to be a complete lout to bring a date there and not “get lucky.” And over all it was the one restaurant that was worth bearing a long taxi ride in Shanghai traffic for. From the ground of the Ruijin Hotel to the colonial mansion that housed it, the Face Bar was the one place we always looked forward to. And it was no surprise that Beijing’s version was just as special. In spite of all those great recollections, I never felt it was complete until I finally escorted My Lovely Wife to a wonderful dinner. It was empty, quiet and the staff was as capable as ever. I had my classic Gimlet and again ordered Green Curry Duck. This time I got it as she is not interested in spicy food. We ate and drank and stared into each other’s eyes and if this is to be the end of my relationship with China’s capital, I’m glad I was able to have it end on that note.

We get there and then some.

2011-03-28T04:59:00.003-06:00

Some long haul international flights are as peaceful as a library. Others are like the night market in Taipei. Our flight to Beijing was firmly in the latter camp. Perhaps this group had had too much coffee. Or maybe they were excited about their impending collision with the Mysteries of the Orient. Whatever the case, they never settled down. Hundreds of visits to the overhead bins and lights that were never turned off. Loud crunching sounds and unmuffled sneezes. Window shades that were never drawn "Out of courtesy for your fellow passengers who want to watch the video entertainment." So many open blinds that I never felt like "that guy" when I snuck a couple of dozen peeks at the sea ice choking the Bering Strait and the snowy volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Being on this flight was like being on the local bus from Hermosillo to Yecora on a hot summer's day - noisy, busy and irritating. It pretty much drove me to conclude that I would never ride in coach again, even if it means heading out once a year instead of four times. I could hear the people up ahead in Business quietly snoring and gently rustling their covers as the rolled over in their sleep. I hated all of those people up there for their obscene luck and purported specialness. Including those I didn't know and would never meet. Even the ones who worked with orphans in Myanmar. Never again I vowed.

Flying to Europe seems like such a breeze in comparison. You look at your watch and see that 5 hours have gone by and know that it's probably time for your in-flight light breakfast service. Look at your watch at 5 hours on the flight to China and you're not even half way. It's still 5 and a half hours until your light breakfast appears and maybe an hour until your Ramen snack. It goes on forever and it feels like longer than that. The time passes as you dedicate yourself to catching up on reading or work or season's worth of television that you downloaded from one of the remaining piracy sites. Or you devote yourself to trying to understand why anyone would want to spend 30 minutes in an aircraft bathroom. Some of your trip will undoubtedly be devoted to that because there is nothing else to do while you're waiting for them to come out. Eventually it comes to an end, ideally with a safe landing and a short line at Immigration. Then a taxi ride into town and you're at your hotel, sitting in the lounge, looking out the window and planning your evening. We chose to dine on the free meal - chicken satay and Kentucky Fried hot wings - before heading out for a brisk walk to my favorite Starbucks for an iced americano. And being truly adventurous we tacked on a trip to the counterfeit market for a little abuse by the vendors. I think the persistent sleeve tugging and pleas to "Look, look!" were a bit of an eye opener for My Lovely Wife. But she survived and we left for a cool evening stroll back home.

Somehow we'd managed to offend the minor deity that controls social harmony, because the perceptual abuse we'd suffered on the plane continued back at the hotel. When you take a long flight that gives you a 15 hour offset in time zones, you're pretty much dead tired by 9 in the evening. The kind of tired that I don't like, where one minute you're watching BBC and the next you're in a coma. With no dozing in between. It was like that for me, at least until some people started screaming out in the hall. Somehow we'd received a room next to a suite that was full of drunks. Drunks who had other friends down the hall that they needed to yell to as well as send secret messages via a code beaten out with slamming doors. Our room also shared one of those doors with locks on both sides that allow for expansion. The drunks also needed to make sure it was locked judging from the number of times they tried it before becoming completely convinced of their security. The din was sporadic and not quite enough to force me out of bed. And this being China, I knew that if we could even get our point across to the front desk, the mediation would take the form of an offer of a new room for us. The prospect of packing and leaving was not appealing. I selected some Brazilian jazz on my phone, put it on softly as background noise and rolled over, figuring we'd solve it in the morning.

Back on the road with after a not so brief hiatus

2011-03-24T11:44:00.001-06:00

As I was pulling into the parking garage it dawned on me that I had not been to the airport for nearly 4 months. Well, discounting the trip I’d made over the weekend to deposit and collect My Lovely Wife. As a passenger though, this felt new, something I’d not experienced regularly since 2005. The airport had been such a regular part of my life during these intervening years that today felt like a homecoming. Of course I’d not yet had the regular set of experiences that made me wonder time after time why I regularly subjected myself to travel. True, it’s always fun to see new things and there is an inherent pleasure in being away that is undeniable. If only you could seal yourself in a comfortable environmental chamber and be delivered to your destination after a long peaceful nap. With filtered sunshine and a light, vanilla scented breeze.

It began as usual with the guy in front of me at security taking his laptop out of his bag and in doing so spilling a hundred loose pieces of paper on the carpet. A woman between us kindly helped him pick them up while I would have preferred to step on them and leave the telltale print of my Ecco shoes. Of course this flustered him enough to slow him down even further but eventually he recovered and moved down the line. It didn’t matter much because the belt was completely clogged up due to the delay they were having in reading the nude scans of the people ahead of us. We got through and he returned the favor of my patience by dropping the same batch on the floor a second time. This time no one helped him with the clean up.

A lot had changed in the airport since my last visit. New restaurants, re-arranged section, a whole new look. However, the one thing that remained constant was that the plane out of Albuquerque was of course the Barbie Jet. We had hoped to avoid that indignity by not taking that godforsaken 6AM flight on United, instead opting for a more civilized noon departure on US Air and a night in San Francisco. As this was vacation we thought it might be nice for a change to leave at a reasonable time and divide the trip in two. I must have known that the Ruler of the Universe does not allow such affronts to his plan and it should have been no surprise when we reached the gate and saw that tiny demonic aircraft smiling through the window. But it was nice to hope for a while

Being a tiny jet there was no room for our carryon bags and so we left them at the end of the ramp. Normally there is a person there to collect them but today – none. I didn’t like that one bit but after verifying this foolish arrangement with the flight attendant I left ours there and took my seat. I spent the rest of the time on the ground looking out the window hoping to see my bag loaded on the luggage cart. Eventually a couple of guys showed up and started throwing the bags down a ramp attached to the jet way stairs. Mine was the last one down.

Being an hour flight it went fast, faster even due to the great stories that some hillbilly in the seat behind me was relating to his row mate. I love traveling with My Lovely Wife, sometimes more than others because it countermands the Laws of Luck that normally rule my life. When I’m with her, I always find a good parking spot and I don’t end up sitting next to guys like this. His stories began with the service record of his father, an Army Ranger who did 5bparachute jumps in WWII, 3 in Korea and 5 more in Viet Nam. He ended with a recounting of the plot of the Stephen King thriller “Pet Sematery” and an observation that there was a cat in his neighborhood that was the spitting image of the evil feline in the book. I was glad when they told us to turn off our electronic devices and wished that we were also forced to sit quietly with our hands folded in our laps.

Our layover in Phoenix was uneventful aside from the fantastic people watching. It’s always amazing to think that people actually chose those clothes at the store and then chose them a second time when they put them on that morning. The plane was very full and lots of people from the front came back into steerage to steal the overhead space around us. One particularly special woman made it a point of blocking everyone by carrying on a phone conversation and sending email on her laptop while standing halfway in a row that she didn’t even belong in. When she excused herself the young man she’d been delaying said, “No problem, we’ll all just wait for you.” Good for him, if I could have reached over I would have given him a pat on the back. We left an hour late spending our time sitting on the runway waiting for the fog to clear in San Francisco. An easy flight a short shuttle ride to the hotel and our day was over. Dinner in the lounge and a stroll along the bay punctuated by rain showers put a nice cap on it.

It was raining like a son of a gun when we woke up with a prediction of flooding and high winds. I had no idea what this meant for our noon departure but it really didn’t matter. We had no connection on the other end to worry about. One additional nice thing about this being vacation and not that painful haul back to my (former) job in Dalian. The shuttle ride to the airport was entertaining due to a mother with four children who had just been evacuated from Japan due to the potential of radiation exposure. She told the story of her trials to a willing flight attendant who had apparently been on the plane with her the day before. Her children – all small – spent their time jumping up and down and yelling. Occasionally she would tell them to sit down in Spanish, perhaps some sort of life preparation home schooling. We wondered why she wasn’t using Japanese.

I’ve never arrived at the SFO International Terminal in any way other than via a plane. Today was a minor adventure when we got dropped off at a strange end of the place and I wasn’t sure where the United Airlines check in gates were. I pleaded with My Lovely Wife not to ask at the information desk, preferring to find them ourselves. But she did and the old guy there couldn’t simply tell us “Down there.” The young guy standing behind him pointed to the left, but he wasn’t wearing the regulation blue blazer so the old guy asked, “Are you checking in Coach, Business or 1st Class?” I snapped and said, “What does it matter, we just need to know where United is.” And he replied, “It does matter because if you’re flying coach you go to Row 1 but if you’re flying Business or 1st Class, you go to Row 2.” I asked again and he gave me a disapproving look and pointed to the left. Of course they were right next to each other and so the finer points of our ticket class didn’t really matter. Perhaps we were his only customers of the day and he was just trying to be helpful. But this is exactly why I hate asking questions.

After being shuffled between two or three different boarding pass checks (even though the lines were empty, they wanted to make sure I went the Business line) I wound my way through to the conveyor belt and got behind a guy who was putting his stuff in a bin for the check. Of course he could not use the 25 feet of empty counter space ahead of him, no, he had to use the very end which allowed me to put a single bin on the counter behind him. He must have had 800 things in 29 little pockets because the stuff just kept coming. Eventually he told me to go ahead and I told him that wasn’t the point. But I did anyway. And now once again I’m in the Lounge staring out the window.

One last late afternoon in Beijing, for the second or third time.

2011-03-20T11:18:00.009-06:00

I arrived in Beijing early afternoon and it was pushing 3PM by the time I made it to the hotel. This was more than likely my last visit and there was one more thing I wanted to do. A tower stands on the far northeastern corner of the Forbidden City, overlooking the moat and I’d seen pictures of that spot which always struck me as pure China – mist on the water, a long stand of willows, the carmine paint and intricate roof of the imperial building. I’ve been to that spot many times before but always under a blazing afternoon sun. And while the pictures I’d seen were almost certainly taken at dawn, I figured the early winter dusk would do just fine. So I grabbed the subway and headed to Tiananmen Square.

It was Sunday and so the area around the imperial palace was heavy with tourists. And this of course meant the sharks that prey on them were out in numbers too. I wasn’t ten feet out of the station when the first one hit – “Hello, where are you from? I am an art student; would you like to accompany me to our show?” I told her in Chinese that I was from Sichuan. She huffed and turned away. I had two choices to get to the spot where I wanted to take the picture – pay 100 kuai and walk through the Forbidden City (again) or head out and walk around it. I chose the latter because first there was no point in going through again and second because I’d not been down that long street. I took a right and made my way along the south wall.

As I turned left two young men fell into my stride and struck up a conversation. “Hello, where are you from?” I knew this was yet another case of starving art students so I fell into my typical routine in Chinese. “I’m from the northeast, I’m not an American, I’m Chinese, and I’m visiting from Sichuan.” This guy took the bait for a change and carried on a conversation for a block or two. He knew I was kidding but he was having fun with it, probably a break from his normal routine of ripping off gullible tourists. Finally though he’d had enough of my subterfuge and looked at me and said “You are very difficult!” As we approached the gallery that was paying him to bring in customers he invited me in and I politely declined saying, “Zaijian.”

It turned out to be a longer walk than I expected, don’t they always? But I arrived there just as the sun was falling below the north wall. All the elements were there plus the unexpected benefit of a skim of ice on the moat, it being the end of November and all. I took many shots but the one thing that seemed to ruin each one was the pontoon boat parked in a boat shed on the west side of the water. A glaring touch of modernity in an otherwise timeless setting. I wonder now if those paid photographers before me simply edited out that annoying detail. Satisfied that I had tried my best I headed west to the opposite corner for another try. There were a lot of Chinese here with fancy cameras and lenses, apparently angling for the same thing. I took a few more pictures and decided that since I was here it might be nice to just head south and circumambulate the whole complex.

There is something special about early winter nights in Beijing. You feel like you might be walking through time. The wall here crowded the sidewalk and it was easy to get a feeling for how imposing and isolated the life of the emperor and his court must have been. To my left an unending stretch of red painted stone capped with green tile, broken once in a while by a fancy gate. To my right, the endless stretch of the hutong, home to the common people who served the needs of the court. All of that disappeared a hundred years ago only to be replaced by the bleak early years of Communism and then the Cultural Revolution. Today we have a vibrant city where it’s common to see a donkey cart tied up next to a Bentley. But on this chilly winter’s eve, the ghosts of the past held sway as I walked along.

It was dark by the time I hit Tiananmen Square and rather than taking the closest subway station I decided to walk back to the eastern side and so complete the big circle. The square was cordoned off and there were a lot of policemen milling around. I wanted to take some pictures of the lights on the government buildings but it would have meant a long roundabout walk as the shortcut diagonally across the square was blocked. I wondered why it was closed off, and later discovered that this weekend had been the beginning of the unrest in the Middle East. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing one led to the other. My plan stymied, I chose instead to stop one more time in front of the main gate and get a nighttime shot.

I spent my last night in China where I had spent so many before – sitting in the Renaissance lounge staring out the window at the bustle below. There was a lot for me to consider – my job in China was over and come early January my career would be over entirely. I thought about all the people at this hotel whom had made my time here so pleasant with cheerful greetings and personal service. I wondered if they would miss me as I had become such a figure during the course of this year. Doubtful I imagine, they see hundreds of people each month and I suppose that they’re doing nothing more than their jobs. But it was nice to feel known, especially in a country where as a westerner you often feel invisible. I thought about how intimate I’d become with Beijing over the course of my time here and how much I would miss it. It’s a wonderful thing to know a city well and to feel comfortable wandering its streets. But overall I sat there considering the end of this phase and the beginning of the next – whatever that might be. I don’t think I had any idea when I boarded that first flight to China back in 2006 that I would end up here feeling this way. Of course, I couldn’t have because I had no idea that such a life existed. I was glad to have tasted it and in many ways sorry to see it end. But not so sorry that I would trade what I was looking forward to. The next phase promised to be even better.

Day Three in Chengdu - Pandas and Pop Songs

2011-03-08T19:16:00.016-07:00

While Sichuan has untold historic and cultural treasures, there is one stop that is a must for every visitor. You cannot fully appreciate the nature of this region until you make a trip to see the Giant Pandas. While China is a country that evokes dozens of images – The Forbidden City, red lanterns, ornate opera costumes, Terracotta Warriors – I can’t think of anything more iconic than those big black and white fur balls. And on this my last day in Chengdu and on perhaps my final trip to Sichuan, the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base was the obvious way to spend the morning.

The word “base” evokes anything but an animal farm in English. I hear it and I think “military” as I imagine most people do. That or baseball. When my friend Ben used it as the descriptor I figured it was a subtlety of translation. But no, that is the name for whatever reason they chose it. We left my hotel after breakfast and headed across town. The weather was once again completely overcast, the little bit of sun we’d seen the day before had failed in its attempt to burn through whatever makes Chengdu skies so gray. Traffic was heavy and I was glad we were going to the closer of the two centers. One site is far out of town in the foothills and I imagine much harder to locate. Of course “find” is a relative term in China unless your destination is a tall building clearly visible for miles around. This place was said to be adjacent to a major highway on the far side of town so we thought it would be a straight shot. Plus we had Ben’s wife’s cousin along and she’d been there at least once. Well, it’s always good to have an informed member in your party because in China they are very useful for getting out of the car to ask questions.

It had been very slow going due to a combination of traffic and construction when we took what we thought to be the correct exit. We found ourselves in the middle of the biggest wholesale fruit market in Chengdu which although not our destination, was pretty interesting in its own right. Hundreds of trucks were pulling into endless rows of long corrugated steel buildings to unload their goods. The area seemed to be arranged by type of fruit, individual warehouses for apples, oranges, pears and all those other fruits known only to the Chinese. While Ben and the cousin were trying to figure out where we were, I was staring out the window wishing I could stop and buy a basket of tangerines. Individual vendors riding special three-wheeled bicycles with a big wooden platform on the front were lined up shoulder to shoulder along the curb, each bike holding a bright pyramid of fruit. I almost asked if we could stop when I went past a pile of the biggest Satsuma oranges I have ever seen but we were on a mission and so I simply enjoyed the view. When the road ran out we stopped to ask directions from a couple of fruit truck drivers. It seemed that we had done nothing worse than having taken an exit too soon. After a U-turn and a second pass by all the beautiful citrus, we were back on our way.

I’ve been to a number of zoos in China and they have varied from horribly pathetic to almost acceptable. The start of this place was not auspicious – a weedy shabby parking lot followed by a long walk down a lane along a concrete wall that was painted with now faded and chipped cartoonish depictions of Pandas. After the customary argument about who was going to pay (the cousin won) we went inside. Some people were selling panda hats and scarves on the island in the middle of the road outside the front gate.

Once inside, my worry that the place would turn out to be a dump was washed away – the grounds were beautiful. Pin neat paved paths led off from a main street into damp bamboo forests, a simulation of how these wonderful animals live in their natural habitat. The weather was cooperating in the artifice too – a faint mist had descended on us. For a moment you could almost believe you were high up in the forested foothills of the Himalayas. After a review of a decent display map we chose to head off in the direction of the juveniles and we hit the jackpot at the first enclosure we came to – a pair of big brutes passed out on a log platform while one of their pals was spread out on its back below, gorging on bamboo shoots. In a place like this you take a lot of photos of the first animals you see because you have no idea how many you’ll find down the road. As I stood there taking shot after shot a young woman tapped me on the arm and said, “excuse me” and asked,” aren’t you the person who sat across from us at the mushroom hot pot restaurant last night?” I turned around and sure enough it was the family we’d been discussing over dinner (see last blog, western woman, Chinese man and two daughters.) I laughed and said “yes” and she replied “I guess you love the Pandas as much as we do.” I agreed and they walked away smiling.

We went on to the nursery where we found a big male sitting outside no more than 10 feet away. More pictures and then inside to see actual babies – 8 or more cocker spaniel sized cubs rolling around in a human baby playpen. I tried to swap lenses on my camera but a guard cautioned me that pictures were not allowed. Ben asked why and the answer was “flash” but he was not budging even when I assured him that I did not have one. I was sorry that I could only save this moment in memory because they were so cute and special.

There was a sign out front that listed the quantity of animals on display. The total for our visit was 53 so Ben and I started to keep count as we wandered around for the next few hours. I’ve seen Pandas at our National Zoo and the zoos in San Diego and Beijing. Seeing a pair of them is special and I though seeing six of them in the capital city was extraordinary. But as our count approached 40, I began to be embarrassed by the wealth. The park was essentially empty, deserted by Chinese standards, and the animals were so close and accessible. Sometimes they were eating; sometimes they were stretched out asleep on a concrete pad or hanging in a tree. It seemed that you couldn’t look anywhere without seeing a Panda. The coup de grace though came at the farthest reaches of the park – 10 adolescents lounging around in a big treed pen waiting for the caretakers to throw them lunch. They sat together in little knots eating and visiting in whatever language they speak. It was incredible to stand there so close and be ignored by them. In the end our count came close to 50, a thorough job of seeing all of them.

Pandas down, it was off to lunch at a place called The Bookworm, a bookstore cum coffee shop cum restaurant. It was this kind of place that always made me question my burning desire to put China behind me. Ben and I sat and talked and enjoyed cup after cup of coffee and a sandwiches. A place like this is so nice that you could see yourself spending all your spare time there when not immersed in your expat work. Nice thought, but probably not a true depiction of life in these parts; here the highlights always seem so capable of making you forget about your daily life.

Dinner this night was at a local place owned by a family friend that specialized in eel and frog dishes. The food was spectacular, even the eel which I’ve never eaten outside of a sushi restaurant and even then only grudgingly because it’s far from being a favorite. While it didn’t look very pretty, it was remarkably tasty. The restaurant was a very loud and busy - more like a giant family party than a café. Friends of Sahsa’s showed up and sat with us. They had an incredibly cute and precocious early teenaged daughter with them who tried hard to entertain us. It seemed as though everyone knew everyone else and I suspect that was the case as it always is with these neighborhood joints. Next up was a frog dish which was interesting as well. I’ve had bullfrog many times in China, always chopped up and stir fried with some complement of vegetables. This time the frogs were whole and they looked a lot like little pale yellow headless people. One of those dishes that you cannot look at too long, you have to simply dive in and of course I did and they were delicious. Last dish of the evening was a steaming stew of rabbit stomachs - I guess the last part of those little fellows that I had not tried. Served with a spicy red sauce laden with red chiles, they were about the size of a quarter and they reminded me of those rubber grapes that grandmas across the land had in bowls on their dining room tables while I was growing up. The only difference was these had two holes instead of one.

The last stop on my cultural tour of Chengdu was Club Muse, a well-heeled disco in the heart of an entertainment district. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a bar and I guess that this was a nice introduction to how far they’ve come since I last went to one. Essentially a prix fixe deal, you buy a very expensive (minimum 100USD bottle of something ,we chose scotch) and grab a table (if you’re as well connected as we are) and put your cell phones in a specially designed Plexiglas stand (so you won’t miss a call) and sit back and enjoy the sights. The music was absolutely deafening and the cigarette smoke choking. If you wanted to dance you got up and did so by your table since the place had no dance floor. A drunken man across from us tried this and fell over backwards, breaking a lot of glasses and a table. Unbelievably there was a ten or twelve year old girl in that party. She would get up and dance with what I assume to be her parents. I thought about her ears and her lungs.

Every twenty minutes or so a live act would come on a tiny stage in the center of the mass of bobbing humanity, sort of a dark version of American Idol. The first was a young woman who belted out some Chinese pop tunes. The next act was a young man and woman, dressed in black leather lederhosen, who performed some strange modern dance moves to techno music. A waiter cautioned me about taking pictures, I wondered if the flash was going to bother the performers. Below me was a table full of young women, some western, dressed in traditional cheongsam and with lots of flowers in their hair. They spent their time posing for pictures and drinking champagne. After an hour or so Susu decided that she’d had enough and offered to drive me back to the hotel. I said my goodbyes to Ben and Sahsa, knowing that this was almost certainly the last time I would see them. They were so wonderful to me, taking the time to put this little journey together and showing me the most incredible hospitality. You only meet truly great people a few times in your life and I was certainly lucky to become friends with them. On the way out I managed to lose sight of Susu and ended up lost in the sea of partyers. I found a waiter and I was at and all that language study finally paid off - I knew how to shout “exit” in Chinese.

Monday morning dawned surprisingly gray. Susu picked me up and drove me to the airport. We said our goodbyes and I thanked her for a wonderful vacation. I was there early and so I had some time to wander around, recalling my last time through here on the way to Tibet. On that day I had to endure extra security – they made me take my shoes off. Today it was just a simple Chinese pat down.

The flight to Beijing took 2 hours. I sat next to a young woman working on her resume. It was in English and she was touting her language skills. The problem was that the grammar and spelling were so very bad that I almost considered helping her. But I was eavesdropping and thought the better of it. We flew on together, daydreaming and butchering my mother tongue.

Day Two in Chengdu - a bit of the past, a bit of the present and a bit of Tibet

2011-03-01T21:18:00.001-07:00

The prospect of another late start – my traveling partners had things to do – meant that I had the time to take a more leisurely stroll down the river. I could see what appeared to be an old tower on the far bank, perhaps a half-mile away and so I set that as my destination. Crossing the road today was much easier and I was on the tree-lined promenade in no time.

True to form, the sky was almost completely opaque although the sun did peep through when the passing clouds offered a momentary break. On these rare occasions it was reflected in the lead colored river water, a reminder that it was there above all that bad air. On my previous walk I had seen what appeared to be a long skein of colorful prayer flags spanning the river in front of a gray stone bridge just up ahead. Due to a long shared history and physical proximity, there are a lot of shared cultural aspects between here and Tibet or Xinjiang as it’s officially known and so their presence would not be unexpected. As I got closer I was quickly disabused of that romantic notion as my flags turned out to be plastic triangles warning boaters of an impending dam that spanned the river up ahead. A Little Egret was perched about mid-stream scanning the water for a morning snack.

I crossed on the bridge and found my way along a paved path that ran parallel to a bar street. Unlike the prim and neat walk on the far side, this one was typical of humans in contact with lots of alcohol – food containers, empty beer bottles and the occasional splash of dried vomit no doubt induced by lethal combinations of those two items. An elderly couple was picking their way through a row of bushes, collecting discarded bottles, no doubt for recycling. Of course in China you never know if the bottles will be recycled solely for their value as glass or if they’ll be refilled with counterfeit beer, re-capped and sold again the next night.

The tower turned out to be the centerpiece of Wangjiang Park (which appropriately means “overlooking the river”). It was built in 1889 during the Qing Dynasty ostensibly as a place for students to gain luck before the Imperial Exams. Upon its completion, the architect revealed that he had in fact built it to honor Xue Tao, a Tang Dynasty poet who is said to have lived here. Her statue stands today in a small glade of bamboo off to the side of one of the paths that wind through the park. While the tower and its accompanying buildings were pretty, the real attraction was the large stands of cultivated bamboo – more than 150 varieties including some with 5 inch trunks. Some workers were busy watering the groves with a fire hose; I walked past trying to see how many unique plants I could pick out.

Susu retrieved me from the hotel around noon and we headed across town to collect Ben and Sahsa. As she wound through the traffic she made a phone call and I asked her if her car had the same direct connection Bluetooth capability as mine did. Being able to link your phone to your car and speak hands free would be a great boon in Chinese traffic in my opinion. She said “no” her car did not have “Lanya”. After a couple of clarifying questions I pulled out my phone to see if I could figure out just what that meant. My translation software did have it and it became one of those foreign language moments that make you slap your forehead. “Lanya” was literally “blue tooth” or perhaps more accurately a “blue colored tooth.” Well duh, sometimes things are as simple as they seem to be.

We arrived in Ben and Sahsa’s neighborhood and found them in a Muslim noodle shop across from their apartment block. In my two years of living here I’ve never been brave enough to walk in and eat in a place like this. While dining in local restaurants was regular fare for me, these places with no menus and little English and Chinese well beyond my ken were a bit daunting. Added to those obstacles was the fact that the food was downright scary to me, prepared on questionable surfaces with no refrigeration and with little oversight. While it’s probably true that the hidden side of my regular restaurants was no different, seeing the giant blackened boiling cauldron in the front window being fed raw materials by regular people didn’t go nearly far enough in maintaining the illusion necessary for me to be comfortable. So I avoided places like this and instead traded away the opportunity for a genuine experience in order to keep my feeling of security.

But this trip was different and I was in the company of locals. I pulled up a stool and took my seat at a low table covered with a vinyl floral tablecloth. Ben and Sahsa were already eating and I asked for the same. After a debate about exactly what “the same” was, a steaming bowl of beef noodle soup appeared before me. I was expecting a bowl of lamb soup and after much yelling and waving of arms that too appeared along with a plate of cold condiments – chile sauce, cilantro and onions. Ben ordered what would best be called a quesadilla of grilled beef and some sort of sauce which was quite delicious. The food was excellent and I was glad I’d finally stepped outside my comfort zone to try it.

We had a bunch of places picked out for today, all of which were located within Chengdu proper. Our first stop was the Temple of the Marquis Wuhou, a monument to the very famous and successful general Zhuge Liang who fought for the emperor Lu Bei during the Three Kingdoms era. A bit of a misnomer – there weren’t really three “kingdoms” - the period filled a gap between the fall of the Han Dynasty and the rise of the Jin. The history was romanticized in a very famous novel called “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” telling the tale of the Cao Wei, Shu Han and Dong Wu clans and their intrigues and struggles. Spanning the period of 220 to 280 AD it was a time of extreme hardship and destruction resulting in the death of nearly one-half of the total population. The temple grounds house both a monument to Zhuge as well as Lu Bei’s tomb. Built separately, they were merged during the Ming Dynasty (1600’s) with Zhuge receiving the better treatment due to his larger role in the history of the country. In addition to some beautiful buildings, you can wander down long alleys lined by tall walls that form large concentric rings around the emperor’s tomb. There is an incomparable bonsai forest in between the first and second ring, with trees unlike any I’ve ever seen.

Jinli Street is to the east of the temple complex and we stopped there is a small second story café for a hot cup of espresso. This district was once the main trading center for the capital city of the Shu Han bringing in merchants from all over the world. It was one of the final stops on the Silk Road as it made its way northeast to Xi’an. Like most reconstructed mercantile districts in China, this one too was making most of its money from imitation art and cheap souvenirs. But some shops still featured the rich silk brocade that this part of China has been producing for more and 2000 years.

The oldest and most famous Taoist Temple in China was our next stop. Qingyang or “green goat” is dedicated to the founder of Taoism, Lao Zi. The highlight for me was the pair of bronze goats that stood outside the main hall. One of the goats was a goat in name only. Instead of a normal conformation this one was constructed of many disparate pieces – the ears of a mouse, the nose of an ox, a tiger's claw, a rabbit's mouth, the horns of the dragon, a snake for a tail, a horse's face, the beard of a goat, a monkey's neck, a chicken's eyes, a dog's belly and a pig's thighs. Much of this odd fellow was rubbed to a shiny bright bronze as it is said that if you rub it in the place where your body hurts, you will be cured.

It was closing in on late afternoon when we found our way to the Jinsha Museum. Occupying a site discovered during a construction project in 2001, today the museum houses hundreds of thousands of artifacts from a culture that flourished here more than 3000 years ago. Chief among these are nearly 20,000 elephant tusks offered in some sort of religious ceremonies. I found it odd to think of elephants here, but apparently the region was much more tropical in the past. The main building was somewhat of a disappointment – dozens of layered pits in various states of excavation that had nothing in them. I couldn’t quite fathom why they had gone to the expense to create a venue that really had so little to offer. As we strolled through admiring the various level of terraced dirt I spent some time entertaining a group of elementary school students who found my presence there quite shocking. We gabbed back and forth in Chinese and English and they spent most of their time in hysterical fits of giggling. I had a nice conversation with their teacher who had the same camera as I did, comparing our thoughts on lenses and his goofy students.

The second half of the complex was dedicated to Shu era artifacts and was truly spectacular – a collection of gold, jade and stone artifacts worthy of any of the great museums of the world. The presentation was wonderful – darkened rooms with walls formed by hanging steel chains and the only lighting coming from above and down onto display cases filled with the most beautiful art. Thousands and thousands of pieces ranging from a collection of tiny turquoise buttons to long ceremonial jade spearheads. There were several small masks made of hammered gold that looked remarkable Mayan, the kind of similarity that always gets me thinking about how disparate cultures seem to end up in the same places artistically. The centerpiece of the show was a 6 inch wide disk of thin gold foil formed into a circle of connected birds. Truly marvelous and considered a national treasure.
After a quick stop at Metro for a couple of bottles of wine, we collected Susu’s sister and went on to dinner at a place renowned for its variety of mushrooms. Like all traditional hot pot places this one featured a roiling vat of hot chile oil in the center of the table controlled by a burner built into the brick base. The waitresses brought dozens of plates of raw mushrooms, some recognizable, others unknown to me. We boiled them in the hot oil creating what seemed like a never ending feast of spicy hot food. We spent some time discussing a group of people sitting opposite from us - a western woman, two Chinese girls and a Chinese man. Our analysis of body language, conversation and gestures didn’t lead us to any conclusions. Husband, wife and daughters or honored guest from the west – it wasn’t clear. The conversation circled back to our table with the women getting pretty noisy regarding whatever it was they were discussing. This is the funny thing about being semi-lingual – you get some of it but not all of it and when you’re 1 of 4 people you pretty much tuck yourself into your own thoughts and let them ramble on. It’s not a bad thing, and it can be fun to listen even if you have no idea what they’re talking about. But it’s always nice to have one person to bring you in. The women stopped talking and started to laugh. Ben put down his glass of wine, looked at me and told me that the ladies had decided that I was the best looking American that they had ever seen.

Our last stop of the night was the Lhasa Bar, a bit of shared culture that made up for the disappointing flags back at the river. We ordered Tibetan beers and a small barrel of Qingke, the fermented barley drink of the Himalayan Plateau. We took a seat off to the side of a stage and sat back and enjoyed the floor show. Tibetan folk singers in traditional costumes performed for us while bar patrons bought white silk khata scarves to place around the performer’s shoulders as a display of appreciation. On a balcony above us, the requisite table full of drunken men pounded beers yelled at each other and threatened to fall over the railing and down onto our table. A little boy, perhaps five, ran around the bar jumping on couches and tables. The cigarette smoke was stifling. I nursed my glass of that sweet barley nectar until Susu announced that she couldn’t stand the smoke. We packed up, downed our glasses and went out into the cool night air.

A year in pictures

2011-02-28T19:28:00.005-07:00

Five or six years ago I began spending some time perusing photographs on a site called Pbase. It’s a place where thousands of photographers – professional as well as amateur – post their portfolios. Some of the shots you see there are great, some not so. But regardless of vision or technique, it’s always interesting to have a look at the world through other people’s eyes. And it was much better than playing Solitaire as a way to stay awake during all those interminable phone meetings.

One of the most common types of galleries you’ll find on the site is the “PAD”, an acronym that took me a while to figure out. It only became obvious when it finally sunk in that each of these collections had precisely 365 photos, in other words – a Picture a Day. The content varies from pictures of teddy bears in exotic places to black and white portraits of someone’s girlfriend to shots of family picnics and flowers. I’ll admit I was intrigued and so I started one on the 1st of July, 2007.

I began the effort in the early stages of my China project, a job that provided a great opportunity for some memorable shots. I was traveling all the time to some wonderful places and on those days picking the best of the best photo was tough. The in-between times were a bit more challenging – it’s hard to find something interesting when the edges of your world are defined by driving 3.26 miles to and from work. Well, that plus some bike rides. But I stuck to it even when it became hard to stay motivated around day 275. Some of my shots were memorable, others nothing more than a truck load of weeds parked in the back yard. And many were taken at 11 o’clock at night when I realized I’d forgotten to take the day’s picture. I’ll admit I was glad when I took the final shot on June 30th 2008 - exactly the same photo as that on the first day - and put the project behind me. The wonder of it though was the product – the power of my pictures to put me right back in the moment for an entire year’s worth of days. People, places, animals and even a shot of my hospital bracelet from the day I spent having one of those tests that comes with passing 50.

As 2010 got underway I thought it might be time to make another attempt as it promised to be an auspicious year in so many ways. I was living in China and about halfway through my assignment. I had a lot of travel planned and almost certainly as many life changes. So at 6:47 AM on the 1st of March I took a shot out the office window of my Kai Fa Qu apartment. Dawn light and a dusting of fresh snow made the otherwise dingy buildings across the street look just a tiny bit better. I was tired – fresh in from a trip to the US – and I was beginning to feel the weight of being away for the better part of a year. But the project was underway and I expected it would turn out to be a very significant year.

March brought the trip of a lifetime with my youngest – Beijing and the Great Wall, Xi’an and the Terracotta Warriors, the velvet rope at a Pizza Hut and then back to Beijing for the biggest sandstorm of the decade.

April found me first in Lijiang wandering the streets of the ancient town and taking a most unforgettable boat ride with my friend Mike. Then it was on to Tibet, the wonders of Lhasa and a most remarkable meal in a restaurant not far from the top of the world. A wonderful encounter with some girls and their dogs at a high pass and then another sandstorm and a delayed flight followed by a plane trip over the snowy Himalayas.

In May I was off to Datong and one of the 3 most holy sites for Buddhism. I found the first of the 3 remaining Dragon Screens here. And then a second round of travel with my oldest - nearly the same itinerary as the first but with an added trip to the Beijing Zoo where we were privileged to hand feed the most wonderful pair of elephants.

June, home for a month and a broken toe. July, some great bike rides with my friend Dermott and a new habit of strolling around my Kai Fa Qu neighborhood after dark looking for shots and experimenting with high ISO photography. August - a lifetime trip to Taiwan with my friends Ben and Scott. And then came September and my departure from China, sent off with some great dinners with friends and my driver, Jiang Yi and a couple of days in Beijing finding the other 2 Dragon Screens.

The early part of the fall was spent finding my way back to working from the US and getting reacquainted while walking the lanes of Corrales with My Lovely Wife. Pictures were a bit harder to come by but being back in a place with a bright blue sky and fresh air certainly helped. It only took a bit of thinking to find a new creative approach. November took me back for once last trip to China, a few more evening walks around my old haunts and then one of the best trips I’ve ever had, off to Chengdu with Ben, his lovely wife Sahsa and her accommodating friend Susu.

The home stretch took me to Mexico and then into retirement just after the first of the year – a huge change that I anticipated with a myriad of emotions, all of which were undeniably positive.

I spent the final 40 or so shots experimenting with techniques and my phone camera, just trying to wind my way down to the end. 2011 turned out to be just like 2008 – the last 30 or so shots were a drudge. In the final days though a few bits of inspiration came and some satisfying shots were taken and logged.

This morning was the final day and in hewing to the long-held tradition, I took the same shot I began with – out the office window. But what a difference, instead of stark gray buildings and snow I had a shocking blue sky, a horse trailer and a barn full of hay. How far the past year has taken me.

Day One in Chengdu - my first exposure to daylight, if you can call it that

2011-02-02T13:45:00.008-07:00

It’s always nice to start the first day in a new city a bit later in the morning. When there are a ton of things to do and see, the natural inclination might be to be efficient and get out and going at the crack of dawn. But having a few moments to appreciate the tinier details of wherever you’ve landed often makes for a nice base from which to appreciate the upcoming wonders of the day. Given our busy night that ended late – packed with travel, beer and rabbit heads - we’d made a plan to start our adventure around 10AM which meant I’d have a chance to sleep in a bit and plenty of time to fully graze the famous breakfast banquet at my hotel. More importantly though, it would allow to get out for a short walk around the neighborhood.

The weather didn’t bode well for our planned trip to the countryside to see the famous Giant Buddha at Leshan. It was sprinkling and completely overcast and of one of those indeterminate temperatures that makes it hard to choose a coat. Too damp and cold for nothing but warm enough that any garment is going to cause an uncomfortable body sweat if you get moving. I suspect that this is the nature of Sichuan, a broad flat plan served by four rivers and locked in tight enough against the budding Himalayas to stop any movement of the clouds. “Si” means “four” in Chinese and “Chuan” of course means “river” whose character is one of those that makes it clear that long ago, written Chinese was born in drawings that depicted the natural world – 川. Sichuan has four major rivers that meet to form the Yangtze, hence the name.

Outside and across the street a riverside promenade lined with Plane Trees was my goal but somehow I managed to pick the busiest corner in the vicinity and had a hard time getting across, even by Chinese standards - some bad combination of feeder streets, traffic lights and everyone being in a rush. I spent a long time standing on the yellow line hoping that a break in the flow would present itself and when one did I had to run to make it. Once across I took a short stroll along the river stopping here and there to watch small flocks of Black-headed Gulls dance on the surface of the muddy brown water, picking at bits of floating trash for a morning snack. A quarter mile or so downstream a string of what looked to be red, yellow, blue and green prayer flags were hung from a bridge. A few people passed me, walking or riding scooters no doubt on their way to work. I took the opportunity of an actual pause in the traffic to cross back over, this time taking a street that wrapped behind my hotel. A small entertainment district had sprung up here no doubt drawn by the captive tourist population. What was strange though was the architecture - anchored by a Pauliner German Brewhaus all the buildings were done in a sort of gray stone chalet style, dropping a bit of alpine Bavaria right down on this side street in western China. Three manikins stood on a small balcony jutting out from the front of the bar. Two blonds in traditional German beer hall waitress costumes and a man in sports clothes wearing what would best described as a yellow Appalachian hillbilly hat. I didn’t notice a corncob pipe as I passed by.

Susu showed up promptly and we headed out into the morning traffic on our way to collect our friends Ben and Sahsa at her parent’s house across town. While I’ve been in this country for two years and spent countless hours conversing with Jiang my driver, I’ve always found it a challenge to be alone with a new person. In our time together I came to understand Jiang quite well, no doubt some combination of his patience and our familiarity. This was different though, an unfamiliar person with a different dialect and speech patterns. I made do though with a combination of my smartphone translator application, the vocabulary I had and an endearing willingness to just say the wrong thing. We chatted about the lack of sun as we inched along with the traffic. She told me that the sun was sad to not be shining down on me today. How very Chinese.

Ben took the wheel for the drive out of town; the ladies claimed the back seat in order to effectively manage the snacks and I sat up front watching the world go by. We made great time on spacious expressways for perhaps an hour before coming up against a big snarl in the traffic, no doubt an accident up ahead. Traffic jams like these in China can turn catastrophic very quickly, at least relative to your schedule. In the fall of 2010 there were numerous instances apocalyptic jams caused by accidents acting in concert with road construction, the most famous of which lasted 19 days. Stories of entrepreneurial villagers making fortunes selling instant noodle bowls to starving travelers were found regularly in the English language dailies. It wasn’t something I wanted to experience and I had a hard time steering my mind away from the possibility, sitting there hemmed in by blue flat bed lorries and cement trucks. Ben took charge though and deftly worked the car across the lanes until we found clear sailing on the shoulder which led miraculously to a nearby exit. We got out of the deadlock and continued on our way.

Unlike the US, getting off the highway in China can be a perilous experience. There are no maps and often the pattern of the roads is dictated more about getting peasants to the local towns and less on a cohesive alternate to the main route. I learned this lesson many times while cycling in the north, using my GPS to plot what seemed a reasonable course only to find myself far afield of where I wanted to end up. Traveling in this country requires asking lots of questions and using a series of ever-narrowing approximations if you have any hope of getting where you want to go. Exiting the highway we took off on a perpendicular tangent to the main route and took the first major right turn in order to continue with what might be the proper direction. Gasoline was a priority now due to the time we’d spent stopped and so we began a long series of glancing passes at stations trying to find one with an adequate supply of the proper octane fuel. Each time we were told “the next one” until it seemed there would be no more. Such is the problem of driving a luxury car out in the wilds where the gas supply is tailored more towards little three-wheeled cabs equipped with rototiller engines. At one station Ben had to perform some handy maneuvering to get the car through a lot that was choked with trucks only to find out that they didn’t have what we needed. On leaving, we passed a several mile long line of their friends, parked by the side of the road and apparently waiting or the station to receive its diesel delivery.

Although these little nameless towns were unremarkable, the road between them was something to remember. I’m not sure that it even met the concept of “road” because aside from broken patches of concrete and a general trend in a certain direction there was little road-like about it. For a time it followed the basic rules of civilized driving – oncoming cars on the left and our car on the right. The edge of the pavement was defined by little rock cairns composed of broken bricks and cement blocks, designed to keep you from driving off the sharp edge and onto the dirt and debris to our right. Some of the pieces and parts of the cairns had found their way into the lanes and so everyone had to counter their presence by swerving back and forth whenever there wasn’t someone coming straight at you. After a few miles of this we shifted further to the right in a quick jog only to find ourselves with oncoming traffic on both sides of us, a third “optional direction” lane had suddenly appeared where before there had only been the debris field. This lane eventually petered out and we continued on until we hit another town and found another route back towards the highway.

Once back on our way and having failed to meet the gasoline challenge we stopped at the first rest area we came to. Somewhere in the course of our off-road adventure we had passed into tea country and the hills here were covered with terraced plantations. This roadside complex was in fact some sort of a tea-themed welcoming suite featuring tea gifts and tea history displays in addition to rest rooms and food stalls. I watched young women heating the special tea pots I’d seen once before in Shanghai. A small copper pot with a three foot spout, the server holds the pot high above their head and shoots a stream a couple of feet into your cup. One girl in traditional dress was intently practicing her routine, doing a set of Tai Chi motions mixed with ballet and delivering a steaming shot of tea at the apex of each move. On leaving we pulled into the shiny new gas station only to discover that it was not yet open. A young man told us to go around behind the tea pavilion where they had a temporary pump set up. It turned out to be installed in a Tuff-Shed and manned by three young women who were in the middle of lunch. They told us that they didn’t have any gas either.

We eventually made it to the town of Leshan and exited. On the way into town we stopped to ask directions from a couple standing at the side of the road. They were so excited to help us that they even offered to get in the car and go with us for a small fee. We thanked them for their generosity and went on, finally locating some fuel after only four or five more stop and goes. As they filled up the car, I got out to take a photo of a sign pointing to the Buddha; in true Chinese fashion it had arrows pointing both straight ahead and to the left.

The Leshan Buddha sits serenely staring across the confluence of the Dadu, Minjiang and Qinyi Rivers. Known locally as Da Fo (literally “Big Buddha”), it is said that he was built in hopes of calming the churning waters that made river traffic very difficult and dangerous. As it turned out, the desired effect was gained perhaps by his presence but more likely due to the debris from the carving being dumped into the river below. Originally started in 713AD, the Buddha was completed in 803 by the followers of Haitong, the hermit monk who originally began the work. This mountain is also the home to hundreds of Han Dynasty tombs indicating that it has been sacred for far longer than the time during which Da Fo has stood. One of these tombs, looted in antiquity, served as Haitong’s home during his work there. It remains today on the crest of Lingyun Shan just above the Buddha’s left shoulder. Da Fo is 233 feet tall and is the world’s largest carved Buddha. His shoulders span 92 feet and a single eyebrow is 18 feet long.

We drove south following a road along the river towards the Buddha passing many tourist buses parked in front of a seemingly endless supply of shops and restaurants. Both of the ladies had been here before and had no interest in doing the hike again so we followed the signs to the far eastern entrance which we were assured offered the complete package. I kept my mouth shut when I saw that we were heading towards the “Buddhist Theme Park”, assuming that this was probably nothing more than a bad translation. They dropped us off and we agreed to meet at the northern entrance in a few hours time.

The park beyond the entrance gate was very beautiful with many trees and manicured gardens. Although it was fall, the place still felt vibrant and alive and it was nice to be out in the woods after the long drive. Being a workday it was not overly crowded. A large wooden sign near the entrance provided a map to the sights – there were a lot of them, the place was loaded with Buddhas. We decided to head to the left in order to loop back around before catching the trail up and over the mountain to the top of Da Fo. As is typical with most Chinese parks, the trails were well built and spotless with plenty of fake log benches for the weary to rest upon. Thankfully this place did not have the all too common piped in music you find in many parks. As we rounded the first corner we came to a magnificent reclining Buddha tucked into a niche in at the base of a tall pink limestone rock face. As I stood there appreciating it I was nagged by the feeling that I had seen it somewhere else before. We took a look at the sign and finally snapped to the fact that this Buddha was identical to one at Longmen, the famous carvings south of Xi’an. Ben read the sign and it did mention the similarity between the two. The English translation was slightly more cryptic but the little light bulb finally went off – the “Buddhist Theme Park” was indeed just that - a park full of Buddhas copied from other famous sites around the world and constructed with colored concrete sprayed on wire frames. We were in the midst of a host of fraudulent Buddhas!

At moments like this you have a couple of options. You can be offended and feel ripped off or you can just smile at the irony and absurdity and go on. We shared a laugh and kept walking, glad in fact that we could get to the more pressing business of climbing Lingyun Shan in order to see Da Fo. Of course this little twist in our day meant that we had paid a much dearer ticket price and would have to walk much further in order to see our true objective. But the twist in our choice of entrances had not yet fully played out and so on we went beginning our climb with an enormous set of stone stairs leading to a temple on the ridge.

The weather had not changed much in the course of the day and the work of climbing the hill resulted in the over-heating I had expected based on my choice of outerwear. I took off my jacket and stuffed it in my satchel and continued up. The walk was challenging and was made no easier by the fact that the trail designers had chosen to go down about as often as up. For every 10 ten feet of gain, 8 were given back just around the corner. A “two steps forward, one step back” proposition in real-life practice. Up above the valley the trees changed to pine and the area to the sides of the trail was carpeted in pale brown needles. We passed many old tombs carved in the rock walls as we walked, emptied by some thieves long ago. In some sort of odd local tradition, the openings were covered with tiny sticks standing on end. After a solid hour of walking and dreading each rise in the path, we came to the top of the hill and the crown of Da Fo’s head. Off to the right was the architect Haitong’s home, an empty tomb carved perhaps 2500 years ago. I went inside and looked around – it was just what you’d expect to find in an ancient, damp rock hole in the ground except that the humanity of the place was touching. Tiny half circles on all the surfaces, the last marks made by the people who carved it. And a short platform in the side wall, the resting place of the person originally interred here and subsequently the rough bed of Haitong as he slept so many nights during the construction of the Buddha. Soot still blackened the ceiling, the last remnant of someone spending a night here.

Da Fo stands in a niche that runs from the top of the mountain to the riverbank below. He is seated with his hands resting on his knees and his feet on tall square platforms and you look directly into his eyes at this level. His head is covered in the carved representation of tightly curled hair; I suppose what you would expect from someone originating in India. His ears show the elongation associated with wisdom and age and the whites of his eyes have retained their color. Overall a pale pink-orange in color, his nose today is blackened, attributed to the air pollution from the factories of Chengdu. The feeling you get from staring down is both stunning and sublime at the same time. A huge monument shocking in scale but serene in its presentation. We took our time walking around the back side of his head before angling through a small crowd on the far side. Here, there were corrals for the visitors allowing for an orderly serpentine line that began where the other (and much shorter) path came to the top. I was instantly grateful to visit here in the off season as it appeared that during the peak, there would be huge crowds and a restriction on how long you could stand and look. I wound my way through the Chinese who were busily taking cell phone pictures of their girlfriends standing in front of the Buddha, arm outstretched to create the illusion of having their hand on his head.

An iron stairway led down to the river and we took it, mistakenly thinking that it was the right way. Hundreds of small eroded sculptures filled niches in the wall to which the stairs were attached. Much like those I’d seen in Datong, many were little more than nubs in the rock telling a tale of what they had once been. Those out of reach or perhaps carved from sturdier stuff were in reasonably good shape. At the bottom you truly appreciate the size – Da Fo sits there towering far above you and the tiny prayer benches set at the bottom.

We continued through a cave system underneath the hill we had climbed. It came out along the river where tourist boats were chugging along to the vantage points around the bend. We were once again on a set of trails heading up and down at the same time, this time though our path was made up of stone stairs carved in the cliff side. I kept having those fleeting thoughts you get when you don’t really know the place well enough to make a definitive assessment yet your innate sense of direction tells you that there is no way you’re headed the right way. Eventually the path wound its way back towards the forest and we found ourselves at a trail junction we had passed hours before – we had clearly gone the wrong way and our options now were to either go back the way we had come or continue on to who knows where. After considering the downsides of both choices we chose the way we had not yet explored and struck out along the river, knowing that we would have to deal with the car and the ladies being somewhere else.

The reward for our adventurous nature was a nice museum dedicated to the Han Tomb Complex carved deep in the rock in the woods along the river. These tombs date to 250BC and the artifacts removed were quite impressive, especially the pottery horses characteristic of that era. The place was so far off the beaten path that I imagine that it must rarely see visitors. You enter through a peaceful garden at the base of a wide carved stone portico, details still showing in the lintels above the tomb entrances. The side of the hill here was choked with vegetation, conveying the feeling that you had just stumbled upon these artifacts while out for a walk in the jungle. After getting a bit off track and ending up on a set of concrete steps that served as a landing for the men who fish the river, we passed through a village that I suppose was sort of a living history museum populated by the guys back on the steps. It was sad – dark, wet and depressing in the way that only these fake places created to allow people to continue with a dying livelihood can be. Half dead fish floated in buckets, waiting to be served to anyone who happened by. Tiny shops sold cheap trinkets incongruous with the place, less about an ancient fishing village than what some local factory had on hand. Old women sat by the path tending to pots – fish stew for the crowd I’m sure was just around the bend. They paid no attention to us as we passed by

One last down slope took us down to the level of the water. Off in the misty distance, a classical Chinese bridge spanned the river. Red, with three arches and intricately decorated with dragons, tiles and eaves; it stood there timelessly in the mist. Finally the marginal weather was giving something back. The bridge could have been 10 years old or it could have been 500. It didn’t matter; it was one of those classical Chinese scenes that you find in travel books, aimed at convincing you that the whole country is decked out in this ancient style.

Ben finally had a cell phone signal so he called Sahsa and told her where we were. I could hear the “what?!” in the background; he hung up and we walked on. Another mile or so down the road we passed through the exit gate and into a muddy parking lot where Susu and her BMW were waiting for us. A man jumped out of the passenger side and held the door for me. Ben told me that he was a restaurant owner from the village near the entrance to the park. He told Ben that no one uses the exit we where we had ended up and so we were lucky that the ladies had chosen his establishment. Lunch was ready for us when we arrived, a big spicy red Sichuan soup featuring a fish that we were told was illegally caught and very rare. It was delicious and only barely troubled my sense of right and wrong.

A more urbane evening was awaiting back in town, a welcome change after the forest slog and the long drive of the afternoon. Dinner was arranged at a fancy place featuring local cuisine that was impossible to get into without the proper connects which we luckily had. It was located in Kuan-Zhai-Jing Alley which turned out to be one those places that you know you could spend a lot of time in and would truly regret not having another chance to visit. Kuan means “wide”, Zhai means “narrow” and Jing means “well” as in healthy and happy. The area was built in 1718 during the Qing Dynasty as a home district for Manchu soldiers just returned from a foray into Tibet. In the intervening years it became a working class district along the same lines as the hutong that ring the Forbidden City in Beijing. Following the same lead as Xintiandi in Shanghai, today it’s an upscale restaurant and shopping district with each alley having a slightly different mix of stores, cafés and bars. It reminded me a lot of Lijiang in Yunnan Province where I spent a weekend during the spring, sparkling clean restored buildings lining old stone paths; cafés and shops spilling out onto the walkways. The most incredible Starbucks I’ve seen was housed in a beautifully restored traditional courtyard house. Three stories of stone block and wood, I would have been happy to stay there and make coffee for the rest of my life. Ben told me that someone had bought the building for a song at the beginning of the restoration period and today it was worth a fortune.

The restaurant we went to was situated in an old stone mansion. We had a table on the second floor against a railing that overlooked a stage on the first floor. It was noisy and busy and not made better by the table of drunks sitting next to us. Thankfully their visit ended when one of the guys stood up, lost his balance and fell face first onto their table which was covered in dishes, glasses and pots. He broke a lot of glass and was now bleeding from a cut on his forehead. His male friends tried to get him upright so that they could walk out and once he was more or less perpendicular to the floor they hustled him out. The women sat there looking pouty and mortified. Drunks were part of the scenery at this place, odd considering that it was clearly upscale. As we sat and enjoyed our meal a lot of young and old men were shuffled outside, barely able to walk. Drunks are common in China but the level of intoxication among these patrons really surprised me.

We ordered dinner and beers and popped open the bottle of bai jiu that Susu had brought along. Bai jiu is a Chinese white grain liquor that is probably best compared to Tequila although opposite in that the better it gets the less flavor it has. The cheap stuff is very bad and the expensive quite smooth. I’d had glass or two of both types before and this one was probably the best of the bunch. From a drinking perspective it was going to be a long night –the Chinese love to toast and my companions were solidly keeping that tradition alive. “Ganbei” or “dry your cup” was the phrase of the evening. Our first course was a wonderful plate of carbs made up of steamed corn, turnips and two kinds of yam accompanied by boiled peanuts all served in little wooden boxes. We made our way through those and a few stir-fried dishes and dumplings before the much vaunted lamb chops appeared. They were without a doubt better than any I had ever eaten, even better than the ones my mother made one Easter long ago when my father brought me home drunk from an afternoon trip to a bar. I got in trouble for those, these I just savored.

As dinner wound down the floor show appeared. Sichuan Opera in traditional dress and featuring the ear splitting voices that characterize the Chinese version of the art form. A duet between a young man, a solo erhu player and finally a beautiful young woman wearing a headdress featuring two four foot long pheasant tail feathers. I sat and kept pace with my toasting companions until it was time to head home. We took a slow stroll, stopping for a desert of steaming hot sesame balls. I love these, a battered ball of red bean paste rolled in sesame seeds, deep fried and served on a stick. You have to be careful not to blister the roof of your mouth. Walking along I fell into a conversation with a group of young women who were surprised to see a lao wei in this part of town. We alternated in Chinese and English as we walked along under the lights in the trees, talking about nothing in general. Eventually they turned off and we went our way back to the car and I off to my hotel, a truly remarkable day behind me.

I head west after discovering that I no longer belong

2010-11-29T11:15:00.002-07:00

I have to admit it was pretty weird being back. I knew all the sights and sounds intimately, but they didn’t feel like mine. I no longer had a connection to the place, certainly nothing like I had a mere month ago. It might be true that we lose that attachment to all the places we’ve lived, but this break seemed final and mutual. Work had pretty much gone on without me, much as I expected. Some people were glad to see me, others really couldn’t care. And in each case my feelings mapped theirs. I visited a few here and a few there and there were lots of hugs and smiles but overall I was really nothing more than an interesting oddity. Someone who had left; I had moved on and so had they. The evenings though were different because now I was back out in the street taking the same long walk I took just about every evening while I lived there.

Two and a half years ago I donned a hardhat and walked through a construction zone to have a look at some model apartments in an as yet unfinished building. I was concerned about where I was going to live during my stay in Dalian and this place offered a genuine opportunity at a higher quality of living. Of course riding up in the freight elevator and picking my way through a debris choked hallway didn’t speak well of the place, but once past the makeshift plywood door, I was in another world. The apartments were beautiful, modern and above all else as fancy as something I could expect in one of the finer cities of the world. I was in love and there would be no other place for me. There were framed prints of horses in the elevator lobby, as strong an omen of this being the right place for me as there could be.

Shama Luxe was supposed to be done well in advance of my November 2008 arrival but it wasn’t so I took a temporary place in an awful hotel and waited. Looking back at that time it was pretty sad, no, it was downright depressing. My room was a dark tube with a horrible view overlooking a shabby apartment courtyard. I hated every minute of my time there and the only thing that kept me going was knowing that sooner or later I’d be in the apartment I’d dreamed of. But the months went by and the delays piled up and finally I realized I couldn’t wait any longer – it was a choice between waiting for the ideal or moving and saving my sanity. I chose a nice bright apartment in a Chinese building and I made my home there along with the people in the elevator and the building guards and all the neighborhood denizens whom I came to know and who came to know me. It was the right decision and in retrospect, living there probably made my stay in China as good as it could be.

On second night back I had dinner with some friends in their apartment in that mythical mansion on the hill. This was my first time back since my construction visit. The lobby was posh, the staff friendly and the security staunch. I rode up to their apartment and rang the bell. Their place was just as I remembered the models – modern and simple and pleasing enough to the eye. But the more I stared and wandered around it became obvious to me that the place was really just a giant hotel room. They’d made it personal, with wonderful pictures of their handsome little boy and other things accumulated by their China travel. But in the end, it was so polished that its nature just couldn’t be overcome – this was temporary living and it was never going to be anything more. I realized then and there that I had made the right choice so long ago. I’d lived among the people and that had been the right thing to do for me. I put those thoughts away and had a great evening of conversation over some incredible Indian food. Of all my goodbyes, this one, realizing that this was almost certainly the last time we would see each other, was the most poignant. I’ve met and worked with a lot of people during my time here and for the most part I don’t care a whit about any of them. These two though and our time together will remain with me forever.

My neighborhood looked no different but the streets were not so vibrant due to the cold. The dinnertime food stands were gone as were the evening strollers. People were now bundled up and walking with a purpose, namely to get out of the bone chilling cold. I stopped by Sunny’s Expat Store for a candy bar and the little girls clearly remembered me. Not so at Starbucks where the staff was completely new. I sat there and had one last Iced Americano staring at the earnest young western women spending their time in this backwater teaching, thinking about how many hours I had sat at that very table, writing, talking or just thinking. One of those obscenely loud live entertainment shows was going on outside, designed to entice people into the mall for some shopping promotion or another. Even inside the beat was pounding and adding an odd accompaniment to the acoustic Christmas music that was playing. Someone sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” another “Silver Bells” both underscored by that driving beat. I finished my drink, tossed it in the trash grabbed my jacket and went outside. The music was bouncing off the buildings, following me down the street and back to my hotel.

I checked out of my hotel the next morning, having had a nice chat with the desk clerk who told me that my Chinese sounded “Chinese.” I couldn’t think of a better compliment. One last day at work and one final omen that my time here was up. My colleague Ben bought me lunch and we went looking for a table. The place was very busy, one last reminder of the half-baked job that was done with the design. When it came to the cafeteria, it seems that the design firm put the original plans into a copier and reduced it by 25%. A table cleared and we made a beeline. I was walking between two lines of tables when something caught my right shoe in mid-stride and I lost my balance. I did a reasonably good job of recovering, bobbling my tray full of food for what seemed like a full minute. But the momentum was too strong and I stumbled forward. The food flew off into space and I went down, hitting my right cheekbone squarely on the back of someone’s chair before ending up on all fours. I stood up and saw a horrified Ayi rushing towards me to clean up. I took a look back at my path and realized what had happened – a young woman was sitting half sideways on her chair, its leg straight out into the aisle. I gave her a stare and she looked terrified. As I sat down to get my bearings, she and her friends hastily gathered their things and left.

A little vacation was next on my agenda and so Ben and I left work late afternoon to head to the airport. Evening traffic was just picking up but we made it in plenty of time. Ben got busted at the bag check for having a brand new (empty) cigarette lighter he was bringing as a gift. The confiscated it but gave him a receipt so that it could be retrieved at a later date. We waiting and boarded on time entering through Gate 5 but walking about a half mile down the terminal to some other gate, far down in the International Section. This flight had apparently originated in Osaka, Japan and so had docked down in the area where they have Customs. I thought this was a pretty odd route, Japan to Dalian to Chengdu, on the other side of China, down in the southwestern province of Sichuan. As I walked I saw two or three people boarding from the last gate on the aisle making me think that there would almost certainly be a problem with my carryon bag if this plane was already loaded. It turned out not to be an issue, those three people were the only three continuing.

At the end I came to a pair of closed glass doors. I figured we had to wait for the agent to come up the jet way and open them so I waited. Down at the bottom some young man, flight attendant perhaps, made a gesture with his hands which I interpreted to mean “I’ll be right there” but the tiny woman behind me had a different assessment. She pushed me out of the way and gave the doors a solid whack with her palm. They opened right up and we went down.

This trip promised to be interesting - Ben, his wife Sahsa and a friend of hers, a wealthy Chengdu businesswoman. We were going to see all the sights while being chauffeured around in the friend’s BMW – a far cry from any other trip I’d taken in China which typically meant taxis and broken English. We arrived more or less on time, made our introductions although the friend seemed to be trying to decide between “Kelly” and “Jennifer” for a western name. I didn’t like either so I suggested “Zoe” but I’m not sure anyone was excited about that despite Ben’s explanation that it was a very classy appellation. In the end she decided to stick with her Chinese name Susu. We spent a half hour trying to find the car in the parking lot and then loaded up and left. We were off. It was close to 11PM, the skies were cloudy but the temperature was mild and it didn’t seem to be raining. I’ve been here twice before but never outside of the airport; I was excited.

The first thing I noticed was the amount of trees. I’ve never seen so many in China outside of the French Concession in Shanghai. Big Plane Trees, still bearing a full crown of leaves lined every road we drove. China is urban and modern but throw in a canopy of leaves and you’re taken back 100 years to when these cities were still clad in their Chinese history. I sat back and watched the shadows playing on the moon roof. They took me to what would be best described as a “food court”, a three storey alley lined with small restaurants and bars. We parked and walked in and were immediately harassed by a little girl, perhaps 6 or 7 trying to sell us a rose. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, at one point actually sticking one in Ben’s back pocket. Retail starts early here as it takes time to develop the fully obnoxious behavior necessary it takes to be successful selling things that no one wants. A young man in a shiny silver suit sidled up and asked us into his place; we walked on rounding a corner and entering the last place on the block. Brightly lit, seemingly clean and about half full of late night diners. Ben and I sat down and ordered, the girls stood up to leave but not before Sahsa asked me what flavor rabbit head I wanted. Ben and I had been joking about those the day before so I took that as a humorous question. I told her “very hot” and they left. A couple of courses came out – dumplings, fish, a couple of other things or two. We had a long discussion about beer, insisting on cold ones and they brought us a couple of bottles. Beer is almost always served warm in China and often it’s the only choice. The food was great - hot and tasty, the two hallmarks of “Chuancai” as it’s known here. I was just about stuffed when they returned with another meal in take out bags – it’s not a problem here to sit in a restaurant, order some things and then supplement the meal with food from some other place. Sahsa handed me a pair of plastic gloves and one of those bags that we use for fruit in our supermarkets. It contained a dark brown globe swimming in sauce – I was about to further extend my culinary boundaries, I was about to eat a rabbit head.

At first impression the thing looked like a bird. I guess when you strip away all the cute bunny exterior stuff like ears and cheeks you’re left with just those two buck teeth sticking out front. Sort of like a beak which makes you think Chicken. I was torn between digging right and taking some photos so I opted for the latter. Problem was I couldn’t handle the thing without using the gloves but I couldn’t work the camera with the gloves because they were coated with the sauce. I finally managed to turn them inside out before digitally recording this momentous occasion. Sahsa explained that you start by tearing off the jaw. Next you split the jaw down the middle like a wishbone which grants you access to the tender meat inside. I was able to get this part done and the meat was very tasty. I was dared to eat the eyeballs but I couldn’t meet the challenge because they were too hard to get out of the skull. The final phase involved biting down on the top of the skull and splitting it to get to the innards, but I drew the line there and went on to the other stuff on the table.

It was well past midnight when we polished off the last of the food and made our way back to the car. The little flower hustler was still there but she had lost her boldness on the second pass. Across the street a dance bar was just beginning to get busy, a throng of skinny Chinese women in skin tight pants and high-heeled boots milled around under a street light. We made a plan to start Friday at 10 AM, the Leshan Buddha was our destination, about 2 hours outside of town. Susu dropped off Ben and Sahsa at their apartment and then delivered me to the Shangri La. I climbed into bed about 1:30 and lay there thinking. This night was over but I could tell that this was going to be a special trip.

Heading back to the Middle Kingdom

2010-11-22T20:21:00.005-07:00

My ability to read potential travel problems has continued to develop with each thousand mile bloc I've added to my Mileage Plus account. I first became aware of this semi-supernatural skill when I was getting out of the car at 4 AM on the departure level of the Albuquerque Airport one summer morning. A shuttle bus pulled into the disgorging lane a couple of car lengths ahead and when the door opened what seemed like a thousand Chinese students began tumbling out. I gave My Lovely Wife a dry peck on the lips and beat a hastier than normal path to the entrance. Once inside I got in the 1st Class line and frantically jumped up and down to attract the attention of the half-asleep ticket agent. She called me over just in time - the Red Tidal Wave was just breaking and had I been 10 seconds slower I would have been an hour late for my plane.

This morning there was no bus and so I said a leisurely goodbye to My Lovely Wife. Turning the corner though my cerebral klaxon sounded as I walked past a little boy, perhaps 9 years old standing alone in the dark wearing an expensive down jacket and guarding what appeared to be a brace of black cordura zippered dinosaur eggs. Little children in expensive clothes standing alone in the dark at the airport is never a good omen and while I like to think that I have a wonderfully magic power, it's likely that an ambulatory bunch of broccoli could read this one. Arriving inside I instantly knew I was right - the 1st Class line was littered with a dozen unmatched suitcases, duffels, and shoulder bags. There was a smaller little boy and a frantic father trying to keep all these metaphorical balls in the air. Over his shoulder was a relic of a bag with a hundred or more paper luggage tags from airports around the world. Odd airports like RIO and even stranger airlines like Pan-Am. I guess these were family mementos and the message was clear - "Don't mess with me because I am a world traveler." It kind of reminded me of those people in Yuma that leave ski lift tickets on their jackets all year long. They were in front of me and I knew I was doomed.

The littler boy stood there distractedly eating an apple while dad disappeared to get his brother. They returned with the dinosaur eggs which turned out to be cases for some sort of helmet, at least according to the conversation I was eavesdropping. An agent called them up which put dad into the next level of frenzy. The boys just stood there trying to be in his way as much as possible. I resolved to remain calm and wait out the hurricane.

Sadly my attempt to enter a Zen state failed - I got called about 10 seconds later. There was only one path for me and it meant winding to my left and cutting directly across their axis of disaster. I picked up my bags and stepping over their piles, cut to the right. The boys, sensing an opportunity to complicate someone else's life dropped what they were doing and stepping directly in front of me, stopped and looked up. This was apparently an early morning test of wills.

Now I'm not the most confrontational person, I'm slight of build, I don't have any tear drop tattoos under my left eye and I lack both gold hoop earrings and a grimy pony tail. I generally suffer in silence and look for a way to get what I need without raising my voice or pulling on my boxing gloves. But enough was enough and so looking at the little imps I said, "C'mon guys" followed with a reasonably nice "Excuse me please."

Of course this turned out to be one of those dads who lives on that planet where kids don't need to be told what to do because they're born fully sentient and embody a complete understanding of the rules and mores of society. Because of their advanced intellectual state, their rights are equal to those of everyone else. And if some of us don't possess that same view, well, we need to be straightened out. Dad looked at me, raised his voice and said, "Hey, he's in line in front of you!" apparently ignorant of the fact that as far as United Airlines was concerned, we were now both at the same place in line.

I took this in for about 8 seconds, continued on my way and turned, looking him square in the eye said, "You travel so you know what the problem is". That took dad back for a second, he looked at me as though in had brought a cricket bat down on the bridge on the bridge of his nose, shook his head and said, "You're right, I'm sorry." I had read him just right and reduced this battle to a knowing wink between two globe trotters. Score one for side of right.

Based on that last encounter it looked like today was going to be a bit of Yin and a touch of Yang. I picked the wrong ID check line that was manned by a Captain Kangaroo clone who spoke like a Mr. Rogers parody who insisted on reading the destination of each boarding pass he stamped and saying the destination with cloying amazement. The guy in front of me was going to "Ooh, Mexico City" and of course the traveler bit, asking what was his most unusual destination so far. "Peru" said Captain Rogers, "Did you see those people with the funny little hats?". I made sure I handed him my domestic pass as I was sure that San Francisco would not get a raise. I was right.

Of course it turned out that the Dad and Lad trio was on my plane. And naturally they lined up in the status boarding line in front of me. They were down to a couple of bags and those dinosaur helmets though so the chaos was more controlled. I gave them a wide berth nonetheless and spent my remaining waiting time staring at the ceiling. We boarded and they had the three 1st Class seats in front of me. While it would have nice to just get on the plane and sit down, we had to have one last drama - the helmet cases would not fit in the overhead bins. The flight attendant jumped in quickly and promised to solve the problem if they would all just sit down and get out of the way. Dad warned her to be careful, they were very fragile. Fragile helmets? At this point my Yin reservoir was full. I was ready for some Yang.

Dad started out by setting the ground rules -

"Boys, look around. Do you see any other children up here in this special cabin?"

"No? Well let's behave in a way that doesn't make the other passengers regret sitting near us. "

Okay, a perfectly clear and well crafted message for a pair of boys whose combined age almost assuredly didn't add up to more than 20. I was doomed. The two little ones sat in the window seats are pointed out that there were other planes here at the airport and that we weren't moving until we were at which point they pointed that out too. We taxied, got up to speed took off and banked to the west, putting the rising sun behind us.

It's amazing what you can learn by listening to other people's conversations.

Divorced - "I can't believe the movies your mother lets you watch."

Artist - "I was up late last night writing letters to people to convince them to buy my sculptures."

Traveling to a Thanksgiving reunion - "Aunt Bunny is coming in from Dubai."

Related to the movie industry - "Why Dubai? Because Uncle Richard is over there shooting a movie."

Geography - "Dubai? It's over there past England and France. You know, past Europe. It's where all the Arabs are."

Big family reunion - "All your cousins won't be there until tomorrow."

The term "Santa Fe" was liberally sprinkled through the remainder of the conversation which pretty much said it all. At least to those of us who live down the road from The City Different. The three of them finally fell asleep and my flight continued without further consternation.

I wish I could say that was the end of our relationship but it was not so simple. Like me, dad had had an oversized bag that had to be checked. Which meant we had to wait in the jet way for the bags to be brought up. We lined up and his came first. He grabbed it and started up the ramp. Mine came up next and I started up behind them. Back on dry land, dad reverted to his own frazzled self. Trying to manage all the carryon bags and the dinosaur eggs was pressing too hard on his organizational skills. The boys were once again on their own and the littler one went up ahead where he stopped and started to swing back and forth on the ramp railing, holding with one hand and planting one foot he was doing one sided vertical snow angels while the other passengers were approaching. I was at the head of the line and I had had enough so giving the little chimp a wide berth I made a move to pass. But it was not wide enough. On his return spin he stuck his arm out straight and hit me squarely in the crotch.

The rest of the morning went reasonably well. I sat in the lounge, ate a banana, went to the gate and boarded on time. I was taking this haul in Coach, having burned up the last of my upgrades on my trip home. Coach is such a crap shoot but I was reasonably sure the seat next to me would be empty, this being one of the perks of being a member with status who riding with the regular people. When a big scary looking guy came down the aisle I knew he was heading for me, I mean I had to expect that in light of my experiences so far. Sure enough he was; I stood up and let him in and he took the window seat. I was grateful for the small favors that life deals us because the first thing he did was to raise his arm rest so thatch could flow into the middle seat. I sat with my fingers crossed hoping that no one else would show up and no one did.

I guess everyone was in for some sort of confrontation on this day because one eventually played out right there in Row 22. Thankfully I was a participant this time. The guy sitting in front of my big scary row mate put his seat back apparently planning go get some sleep. Once back, the guy in front realized that Big Scary Guy's air jet was blowing right in his face. He sat up and turned around and what followed was one of those conversations that would be impossible to make up -

"Excuse me sir, you air is blowing right down my neck. I won't be able to sleep like with that."

"Sorry, I need the air on me."

"But sir, can't you adjust it a bit so that it's not blowing directly on me?"

"It's where I want it."

"But it's blowing right on me."

"Then your seat is back too far."

"That's what seats are supposed to do, go back so we can sleep."

"You seat is back too far."

"I don't understand what the problem is; I'm not trying to pick a fight."

At which point Big Scary Guy reached up and turned off the air with a clearly disgusted flick of his wrist.

From then on it was just that same old long ride on the bus. I joked with one of the flight attendants about how bad it was back here and she laughed and told me that they call it “The Grand Ballroom.”

With three hours left in the flight, Big Scary Guy and his pal got into it again with exactly the same conversation but this time the air stayed on. That got me thinking about what it must be like to be a big scary guy. You simply don’t have to cooperate or negotiate if you have no fear of wimpy little guys sitting in front of you.

This day ended up being one of those great ones in Immigration where you walk right up to the desk. I was praising my good luck when it ended with a passport problem that required a supervisor and a call to the higher ups. I’m guessing some combination of a new visa, being a former resident and my charm.

Because of the fall time change I could no longer catch the earlier flight to Dalian so I settled in for a 3 hour wait. Spent some of the time at my favorite secret Starbucks where I was finally able to gather evidence of the table service that never seemed to be on where I was there with someone else. I had a package of French Fries at Burger King and caught the bus out to the plane. Someone asked where the plane was and I said “Tianjin” which meant a 10 hour ride. Too bad we weren’t on Friedman’s bullet train.

The last emotions of the day surfaced when I rode into Kai Fa Qu. This is the first time in 4 years that I have not been returning to my apartment. This is a business trip. As we passed the smokestacks behind the Olympic Ring Park at the beginning of Jinma Lu, I was reminded how the stink of the air forced me to sleep with the air conditioner on throughout last winter. The lights were the same and the only discernable differences were buildings nearing completion and some new businesses. I got out of the car at the hotel entrance and looked up at my old apartment building. Way up high on the 24th floor a single light was on. My time was over and the torch was passed. I was a visitor now.

One more last early autumn afternoon in Beijing.

2010-11-21T22:41:00.001-07:00

This was perhaps my twentieth or so day spent sightseeing in Beijing. I’ve been here so many times that I’ve visited all of the major sites at least two or three times and so today’s goal was quite different – far flung districts and third level attractions - three temples and one pagoda from the 11th century. While Beijing is an old city there really isn’t much left of it that predates the extensive building that the Mongols did in the 14th century at their beginning of their Yuan Dynasty and most of that was rebuilt after the British and the French were done burning all of it down at the end of one of the Opium Wars. I have a sweet tooth for really old stuff and so I was excited about these places - off the beaten tourist path and so perhaps quiet and empty. There was an additional last place I hoped to see, a bridge that figured prominently in the travel writings of Marco Polo but its location on the far western fringe of the city and away from a convenient subway station was enough for me to take it off my list.

On my next to last night here, I sat in the Lounge and had a conversation with a colleague about the nature of Beijing. He raised an interesting point, that although this city was big, an international capital and loaded with culture, it had not yet risen to the level of “one of the world’s great cities.” That idea got me thinking about what exactly qualified a place for this exalted list. Culture, history, appeal, night life, shopping, and “presence” – all things that we would attribute to the cities each of us might consider “great.”Beijing is certainly flush with all of those. I took it a bit further, fitting it to my recent experience, namely a place that would be judged by one and all as ideal for an expatriate life. I think if you asked just about anyone knowledgeable of the world, London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Zurich, Rome and Tokyo would fit this lone criterion. Beijing I think would be categorized the way My Lovely Wife did so when I told her I had the chance to move to China, “Where on our list of places to live does China fall?” and the answer at the time (and today) was “It’s not on the list.”

So what’s wrong with Beijing? I’ve come to really love it after many visits. But its list of detriments is daunting – traffic, crowding, pollution, a restrictive government, an opaque culture and an incomprehensible language. Now most of the majors suffer from the first two and some of them from the third although the pollution in Beijing is in a class of its own. I mean, you don’t get Gobi desert sandstorms that turn the sky bright orange at midday in any desirable city that I know of. The nature of the governance doesn’t really affect most visitors so I don’t think it’s that. Rather, I think what keeps Beijing off the list of the most desirable cities are the last two items – the language and the culture simply make this an interesting place to visit but a tough place to live. A long term stay here simply grinds you down. And that jives pretty darn well with my experience at the end of these two years on this side of the Pacific.

It turns out that September must be one of the ideal months here in north central China. Mid-60’s temperature, crisp blue sky, and the hint of fall in the air. On this morning the traffic was still pretty messed up from the holiday as most people were off of work but still off visiting. I was committed on this trip to make liberal use of the subways so I left the hotel and headed north to Guomao Station choosing it instead of the closer Shuangjing Station because it meant not having to do a transfer. I walked past the restaurant where Aidan and I had seen the black bunny fattening up in a cage on the stoop on her visit in March. I went down the escalator, bought a ticket and caught the #1 line heading west. I was headed towards Fuxingmen Station on the far side of the city, it offering the shortest walk to the places I was going. While Beijing does have an extensive subway system, the distance between stations remains quite big in some locations and there is always some walking involved. But on a day like this I was not averse to a little exercise. The cars were full of people heading to Tiananmen Square for a holiday visit and as we passed those stops the crowd thinned out and I was able to sit down for a change.

Exiting the station I went south crossing one of the canals that winds through this side of town. A hundred years ago barges containing Qing Dynasty nobles would have been passing beneath these bridges carrying the elite from one spot of splendor to the other. Today nothing plied these waters but the scene was peaceful – a deep blue sky and the brown water of the canal slowing rolling along its way. I found my first stop pretty quickly – Baiyun Guan (Temple of the White Cloud) – Taoism’s major center of worship here in the capital. In Chinese, Taoist holy sites are not officially known as “temples” but rather Guan. There is no deeper meaning in the language; rather the use of unique words merely indicates the differing religious affiliations of the structures. Alternately, Buddhist temples are known as Si or Miao, the latter suggesting the presence of a monastery. The site was first built on in 739, but those structures were destroyed by fire late in the 11th century. Genghis Khan ordered a major renovation in 1224 as part of his overall rebuilding of Beijing, but what stands today dates from 1443. It was a wonderful spot but not very different than any of the dozens of other temples I’ve visited here. The guidebooks say “the incense smells sweeter” and I suppose that might be true, but perhaps at this point I’m simply a victim of temple burnout. The architecture, gardens and worshipers seem to have become pretty much interchangeable for me although I will admit that the lack of tourists made it a hair nicer. This is a functioning site full of regular people and not generally a tour bus stop. Given my goal of getting off the beaten path, this first stop was a success. I roamed the grounds watching Chinese performing their rituals in front of the popular deities that promised wealth and fortune and having had enough wandered back out into the streets.

Tianning Pagoda was next on the agenda and the path there was not particularly clear. There are a lot of major roads in Beijing that get in the way of walkers, often making it very hard to get to the other side. I could tell from the map that this was going to be one of those situations, with a Ring Road in between me and where I wanted to be. The map showed a couple of ways under it, but information like that really doesn’t mean much here – maps are little more than suggestions and the roads are laid out to serve drivers, not walkers. Walking east, I purposely overshot the place where I thought the pagoda might be, walking through some nice simple neighborhoods while looking for a right turn in order to head south. I found one that looked promising and sure enough I could see the top stories of the pagoda rising high about the freeways, looking at once marvelous, dingy and completely out of place. Next to it rose a much taller and far less interesting smoke stack, the perfect companion here in a country that doesn’t seem to be able to get anything right.

I fell in walking alongside an attractive young woman who gave me a smile mixed with friendliness and bemusement as though I was an attractive guy who stupidly far out of place. I stopped to take some photographs of Morning Glories partly because I thought that they were interesting but mostly because I wanted to get behind her thinking I’d feel far less self-conscious if she was ignoring me. She found this even more interesting, almost to the point of laughing at me. I considered making conversation but I’ve learned through many painful encounters that it’s a dangerous step to take given my limited listening comprehension skills. You speak and then they get this misguided notion that you can understand. After a block we hit the road that ran parallel and below the Ring Road and unfortunately she turned in the same direction as I did. I picked up speed, passed her and left her behind as I went looking for a way under the highway.

A couple of blocks up the road I found myself on the original street I had walked to find Baiyun Guan - apparently my sojourn in the neighborhoods had been unnecessary, I could have simply left the temple and walked straight here. I took a left and went under the Ring Road and taking another left headed towards where I thought the pagoda might be. I could no longer see it as these buildings were tall enough to block it but the smokestack still loomed so I knew I was on the right track. At the next intersection I took a right, again heading south and so hemming the pagoda within the city block to my right. As they presented themselves, I took a moment at each right turn trying to decide if these narrow streets were the correct way in. On a whim or a hunch I turned at the third opportunity and once through a busy neighborhood street market I found myself at the entrance.

I could tell immediately that this place was special. The compound was pretty much deserted aside from some construction workers busy on a renovation project and a handful of worshipers doing the same clockwise circumambulation of the shrine that once finds at the Jokhang Temple in Tibet although minus the prayer wheels and the beads. At the center of a courtyard formed by low crimson buildings with gray stone tile roofs stands a 189 ft. tall eight sided stone pagoda carved with the pantheon of Buddhism. These pagodas were built to house the scriptures and relics brought to China more than 10 centuries ago by itinerant monks who traveled the trade routes between here and India and as a result you see motifs that reflect not only the emergence of Buddhism here, but also those associated with the place of its roots. Indian Elephants carry Guanyin and Bodhisattvas across doorways guarded by the same fierce temple guardians you see in Lhasa. Persian fairies float in the air and Chinese saints stand guard above the bricked off windows. Everything stands supported by a base of overturned Lotus leaves, carved in the same gray stone and representing eternity. At the lower levels the carvings lack heads, knocked off by zealots during the Cultural Revolution but above, they’re intact, swirling above the now much changed urban landscape.

Built between 1100 and 1120 AD at the end of the Liao Dynasty, Tianning is truly a thing of beauty. Unlike the wooden pagodas throughout China that it mimics, this structure is completely solid and so was never used to house artifacts as its inspirations were. 3500 bells still hang from the tip of every eave and during a strong wind the place is said to be musical. On this day it was a bit breezy, but not enough to get the bells moving. A Buddhist nunnery stands at the back of the compound and saffron robed nuns were coming and going carrying food to some midday repast in one of the courtyard buildings. Out of respect I did three passes around the structure meditating on how I came to be at this place walking among people doing the same thing, although most of them must have been on their hundredth circuit by the time I joined in. I spent the rest of my time trying for the perfect picture, waiting for a while at one point while some Frenchman tried for the same shot. He stopped to talk and told me that he had been here once before a few years earlier but found it closed. He said he was happy it was open today and I agreed.

I have been to a few places that really pained me to leave, and this was one of them. But there remained things to do so I left and retraced my steps back towards the subway station. It was now midday and things were changing in the streets. I passed a long line of parked taxis, each with a driver stretched out and sleeping on the back seat, waiting for the lunchtime break at some factory. I walked past some sort of government gentlemen’s club (judging from the Mao over the front door). Inside a long line of beautiful young women stood shoulder to shoulder chatting, each dressed in identical yellow and pink cheongsam waiting for some functionary to arrive. It was a long walk back to the subway (isn’t it always longer heading back?) but I made good time, caught the next train and rode it to Wangfujing Station for a bite of lunch.

Wangfujing is a very fancy upscale shopping center a few blocks from the Forbidden City. There were a lot of eating opportunities but I chose Starbucks simply because it seemed the easiest. I grabbed my coffee and sandwich and sat back in a corner to do a bit of people watching. It was an interesting mix of wealthy Chinese out for a day of shopping with their kids, western tourists and what I would guess were expats. A group of ample Russians sat at the table next to me, chasing off a couple of quiet businessmen. They were there for deserts, sharing one of each on the menu. A western dad sat at a table with his son, neither speaking. He was engrossed with his Blackberry and the kid was occupied with a handheld gaming device - just a dad and his boy out for a day together, separately.

I left the mall and started walking roughly in the direction of my next destination, Dongyue Temple. Instead of walking the main streets I took a turn and wandered into Lumincang Hutong, one of the old neighborhoods that ring the former Imperial capital. These charming little ghettos used to house the people that worked in the Forbidden City and today they house regular people. Their condition got me thinking about a piece I had read the day before in the New York Times. Thomas Friedman was writing about his trip to the World Economic Summit and he was musing about the 200 mph bullet train that he was riding from Beijing to Tianjin. He said that they built it in only 9 months and he was wondering why America can’t do the same thing. I thought these hutongs said quite a bit about this. Tiled concrete blockhouse communal latrines every 10 yards and water taps at the intersection of the crooked little lanes, all within a half-mile of the center of the Chinese government made me think perhaps that the Chinese might be a tad more interested in providing impressive engineering projects for the consumption of naïve western journalists than in giving the most basic services in the literal shadow of the center of power. Built by men living in communal prefab dormitories governed by few safety regulations, things can indeed go up very fast over here. I didn’t arrive at an answer as to why westerners can’t see the forest for the trees when it comes to China, but I did have a nice time taking in the sights along the shady lanes. One thing I have taken away from my time here is that so much can be gained by just spending you time among regular people doing everyday things. Eventually I literally stumbled on Zhihua Temple, one that had eluded me on a previous visit to this district. It wasn’t a surprise that I had missed it before - it was one of those places that you can only find when you’re not looking for it as it was tucked into a niche at the end of a tiny lane.

Zhihua, which means “Temple of Wisdom Attained”, was also built in 1443 by one of the powerful court eunuchs by the name of Wang Zhen. He went in and out of favor with the court, eventually he was killed along with all of his family only to be restored post mortemto prominence by a succeeding emperor. Eventually his relics were destroyed again and the temple was given over entirely to Buddhist statuary of which there were several remarkable examples. At the back of the complex, a hall held an impressive diorama depicting the meeting between a Buddhist scholar and the Khan. Instead of a fresco, this tale was told via thousands of tiny carvings of mounted Mongol warriors surrounding a large covered wagon which hosted the meeting of the two notables. Zhihua used to also have a complicated set of carved panels that were somehow spirited away by some monks during the convulsions of the 1930’s, ending up in a museum in the US. Little temples like this are often gems – relatively unknown and yet quite beautiful. Zhihua did not disappoint me.

Before leaving Dalian I had taken the time to print out some maps of the location of the Dongyue Guan and as I walked along, I pulled them out for a review. Judging from the amount of traffic and construction, things didn’t look too promising - I found the right combination of streets but most of the area was hemmed in by construction fences and skyscrapers; all new building which led me to think that either the temple was gone or currently hidden or being incorporated into some sort of retail theme park. I tried the same trick I’d used at Tianning, walking the perimeter of entire block where Dongyue was supposed to be but there was no evidence that it was there, just offices, parking garages and shopping malls. Having just had the serendipity of finding Zhihua I took this as a sign and decided it wasn’t worth the effort so I left, heading back along Chaoyang Road towards the subway station home. Two blocks up the way I looked across the street and found myself starting at the red walls of a block-wide compound – Dongyue! I had been victimized once again by the Google Maps Offset that sometimes puts addresses a quarter of a mile off in the wrong place, so worried is the Chinese Government that someone might call in a missile strike. I crossed and went in.

Dongyue Guan was built during the Yuan Dynasty between 1319 and 1322. It was rebuilt in 1447 and twice more in 1698 and 1761 during the Qing Dynasty. For most of the 20th century it was variously offices, a school or an apartment block until 1996 when it was declared a cultural treasure and returned to its intended use.

At first this one seemed to be yet another temple but this one had something I’d not seen before. Forming the outer walls were dozens of little alcoves arrayed along long porticos, each representing the pantheon of Taoist deities. These little groupings are called “departments” and they cover the full spectrum of Taoist life in the spiritual world. Rivers, Forests, Truth, Heaven, Punishment, Records, Wisdom, Lies, Theft, Life and Death – each room had ten or so life-sized painted plaster carvings of the various players on their vast cosmic stage. Fishmen, Frogmen, Demons, Sages, Buddhas and Farmers – all present and accounted for in a half circle to each side of the celestial department manager. Taoist has 76 of these departments and there was a room for each, holding nearly 1000 statues. Out of respect I usually don't take pictures in these places but I snuck a few on this occasion when no one was around. In the most remote courtyard I found artists selling their rendition of the Jade Rabbit, that floppy eared fellow who lives in the moon making medicines for the gods. He is popular here as he is known to put an end to plagues. I fell into a conversation with one of the vendors, admiring his work and talking about the spotted animal that the Jade Rabbit was riding. I thought Appaloosa and so I picked out two to purchase. Upon closer review they turned out to have antler and so were not horses but deer but it didn’t matter, they were a nice trinket in spite of being the wrong mount. Dongyue also had a fine collection of stone stele, perhaps 1000 in total. The columns, recording the most mundane of life’s details – births, deaths, tax collections, visits by dignitaries and holy men – are a common feature at cultural sites across China. In this case they were arrayed in little squares beneath towering pines and offered a nice opportunity for a reflective walk.

I spent my last night in this fair city the same way I’d spent it a hundred times before – sitting in the lounge, eating snacks and working on a glass of wine. A planned dinner with a friend fell through when his plane was late so instead of heading back out I spent my time perfecting a photograph of a clear full moon rising against an indigo sky, above construction cranes across the street. The moment was one of those golden ones where just about everything seems to come into harmony. Never mind that the next day was another day of challenging travel, or that the upcoming weeks meant fitting back into my regular life and transitioning my career to its next phase. For this night, the view was beautiful, the light soft, the Lounge hostesses happy to admire photos and things just felt right - perhaps the best possible way to end my full time life on this side of the world.

Mid-Autumn Festival and those ubiquitous clay Rabbit figurines

2010-11-05T09:38:00.004-06:00

It seems that clay Rabbit figurines were once a popular part of the China's Mid-Autumn Festival. But like the physical representations of so many old customs, today they are little more than collectables and found mostly in places that sell folk art (I found mine at Beijing's Dongyue Temple.) I've seen them many times in Beijing - small versions for sale in markets, larger statues outside of art galleries in the chic neighborhoods and even as coin-operated rides for children outside of shops in the hutongs. I remember the first one I saw standing outside a small gallery across the street from Beijing's Confuscius Temple. My daughter Aidan and I stopped, gawked for a moment, took a couple of pictures and wandered on thinking no more about it.

While the websites of the official Chinese travel agencies explain them away as a quaint custom, I wanted to find the source of the legend and sure enough, behind the quotidian lies the romantic.

Here is a rendition of the tale, conveyed via a most interesting translation -

"First give you about a legendary story: One year, the Beijing city suddenly Naoqi the plague, almost everyone has a patient, the kind of medicine is not brought the matter. See the world in the Chang'e moon incense scene of medical treatment was so sad, they send around to rabbit to human good of healing for the people who. Rabbit into a girl, came to Beijing. She left a further one, cured many patients. People to thank the moon, must give her something. What can Rabbit do not just borrow clothes to others. Thus, for a dressed rabbit Wherever he went on, and sometimes dress up like a sell, and, sometimes like a fortune teller ... ... while the men dress, while another woman dress. In order to give patients more treatment, the rabbit sat on horses, deer, or a woman riding a lion, tiger, traveled outside the city of Beijing. Rabbit plague to eliminate the city of Beijing, it went back to the Moon Palace. However, her beautiful image has forever remain in the hearts of Peking Man. Thus, people with a rabbit shaped the image of mud, with riding a deer, there by Phoenix, there are beaded with armor, and also dressed in clothes of workers all doing strange things, very cute. Lunar on August 15 every day, and everyone should worship her, put her delicious fruit bean, used to reward good fortune brought her to the world and happiness. It is also affectionately called her "rabbit Yeer", "Grandma Rabbit."

One last autumn afternoon in Beijing

2010-10-23T09:56:00.010-06:00

I decided before leaving Dalian for the last time that I would spend a couple of days in Beijing since I knew it was unlikely I would return. Over the course of my many visits, I’ve grown to really like the city, the kind of affection you get when you come to know a place – how to get around, what to do and where to go. They say there is comfort in routines and it’s true; if you can get yourself in a pattern in a place, it allows you to embrace it in a better way.

I chose the 22nd of September to leave for a couple of reasons. First of all it was the beginning of the Mid-Autumn national holiday and those days are great for traveling in China. We’ve all seen the media coverage of the throngs of Chinese trying to get somewhere, but those are always in the days leading up or following the actual holidays. The concept of “holiday” is a bit different here – often workers disappear for a month or more at a time and everything from the local store to the staff in your factory is affected. I suppose it’s no different in the US (aside from the flexible number of days) – Thanksgiving Day is great to be at the airport. The lines are short, the seats are empty and you’re pretty much guaranteed of no delays, barring some unfortunate weather. My second reason for leaving on that day was that it would get me out of my now stripped apartment and away from the not so great hotel across the street. If I had to cool my heels for a couple of days waiting for the big bird home, it may as well be in a place I enjoyed. And I did have time to kill because the downside of traveling over these holidays is that lots of Chinese take up the seats on the once-per-day flight to San Francisco. Because of this I was unable to find anything before the 24th.

As I rode over on the plane an article about a recent spate of Beijing traffic jams caught my eye and I was surprised to see that the 22nd had been declared a voluntary “No Car” day. “Great” I thought, it will be an interesting experiment to see just how fast the normal 45 minute drive in from the airport will be. Sure enough, once in the cab and on the way, the major arterials were empty – we made such great time from the Airport Expressway to the 3rd Ring Road that I thought a record was in the making. Now I don’t like going this way, I much prefer a route that uses the 4th Ring Road and a quick little expressway by the name of Jintong which leads to a fast surface street that dumps out right by the hotel. Because it’s a better route, I trained myself to tell the cabbies the precise directions – “Cóng zhèlǐ dào dōng sì huán lù dào jīngtōng kuàisù dào tōnghuìhé bēilù zài dōng sān huán lù zuǒ guǎi ránhòu yī gōnglǐ” which translates as “From here go to the 4th Ring Road, then the Jingtong Expressway, then the Tonghui River North Road and when you get to the 3rd Ring Road turn left and go one kilometer. It sounds easy I’m sure, but trust me it’s a mouthful to remember. The advantage of going my way is that you don’t get bogged down in traffic on the 3rd Ring Road which is pretty busy, all the time. My way is sort of a cross-country route that avoids the traffic centers until the last minute; that last kilometer in other words. However, I wasn’t driving and this guy had a plan and just as I knew it would, his plan came crashing down the minute we left the Airport Expressway. “No Car Day”- I guess the Beijingese drivers hadn’t read the English version of China Daily. We went from rabbit fast to turtle slow almost immediately, and for the next hour (on a piece of the route that normally takes 15 minutes) we inched and crawled and made bad choices in trying to advance ourselves in the jam. I sat in the back smiling at the young women in the buses that would come up next to us; some of them smiled back, some glared and looked away. One or two ratted me out to their boyfriends who took over the glaring. We crawled along, first passing the still burned out CCTV skyscraper and then sat and stared at the hotel that was getting ever so much bigger as we slowly neared it. When he didn’t take the appropriate exit I got even more worried but he explained that the surface road below was even worse and I verified it with a quick look. We drove past the hotel and he opted for the exit in front of the mall next door which is never a good option. It means one of those oddities of traffic where your lane merges to the right across four lanes that are merging to the left. Today though there were only two because the two closest to the sidewalk were choked with cars parked at every imaginable angle to the curb. I should have mentioned that the biggest thing about Mid-Autumn Festival is the sharing of the Moon Cake, those tasteless blobs of paste filled with a disgusting salty fermented duck egg. And like holiday shoppers everywhere, some people just wait until the last moment. They’re on their way to their Auntie’s house and they realize that they forgot to buy their Moon Cakes yesterday. So they pull up their BMW at the Viva Mall in Chaoyang, and with no regard to their effect on the universe, they abandon it with its butt end into the traffic while they run in to pick up a case of those delectable delights. Now this would be bad enough in any American city, but it takes on a whole new dimension in a place with 5 million cars on the road. Needless to say it took a solid hour to drive the remaining ½ mile around the block to the hotel. As I left the cab, another fare started to climb in but the driver told him to “get lost”, I think he had had enough for the day.

After checking in I took a long walk to the Xiushui Market to get a couple more strands of pearls from my favorite pearl-seller Miss Shelly, a couple of pairs of fake Raybans and two counterfeit watches, one for me and one for the kid. If this was to be my final visit, I figured I had to make my farewells with my favorite vendors. I stopped for a sliced beef sandwich at Tim’s Texas Bar-B-Q and had an interesting conversation with the waitress who was on her break and sitting behind me with her husband and baby boy. The boy was bundled up in the manner that all Chinese children are bundled with what looks like thick cotton batting and in spite of the fact that it was 80 degrees outside and not far below that in the restaurant. The boy was a sweat ball. She explained that because of the holiday the boy’s daycare was closed and so he was hanging out with dad while she tended to the few people that were coming in to eat. I told her that the boy was quite handsome. She pondered my comment for moment and replied “Unfortunately he takes after his father.”

After a coffee at Starbucks I took a leisurely late afternoon walk back to the hotel. The holiday had largely cleared the streets and the setting sun created nice, golden patterns on the side of the skyscrapers I was passing. I saw the world’s loneliest McDonalds deliveryman riding his moped down the wrong side of the street, having dropped his goods at one of the tall buildings where someone must have been unfortunate enough to be working. It was a glorious afternoon – blue sky, warm temperatures and no crowds – about all you can ask for in this city.

I spent a few hours in the lounge planning my next steps; when you’re alone and not a party animal the evenings sometimes require some thinking. I like the lounge because I can have snacks for dinner and I don’t need to go hunting and gathering for a restaurant alone. Many nights this year have been spent at this one particular table, eating chicken wings and tempura yams, staring out the window, drinking white wine, listening to their Brazil-techno music and chit-chatting with the girls who work the desk. From this vantage in the evening, there is a building on the eastern horizon that is a veritable psychedelic lightshow once 8 PM rolls around - crazy colors and patterns that go on and on until perhaps 10 PM. I’ve sat there alone, with both of my kids and multiple co-workers discussing the place and wondering what it was. Entertainment district? Shopping mall? Tonight I decided it was time to find out. I asked one of the girls if she knew and told her I was going to walk there. I got the answer I expected – when it comes to walking in this country, the reply is always “Oh that’s too far.” Walking is something for countryside peasants, not gentile city dwellers. I grabbed my bag and my camera took a good look at the route and headed out the door.

It was dark now but the traffic on the main roads was still horrible. An almost full moon was about 1/3 up in the clear sky above the horizon, actually able to be seen for a change. There were a lot of people coming and going in the neighborhoods, many with the traditional red Moon Cake shopping bags. I passed (of all things) the Beijing Super 8 Motel and pondered how many nights I had spent in those downscale domiciles while off on my birding trips of yore. To think I used to be a Premium Member. Sometimes walking the streets in the big Chinese cities is a challenge because there are few streetlights, the sidewalks tend to disappear and there are always a lot of obstacles like missing sewer grates and extension cords. I came out of the neighborhoods near the hotel without ending up on the ground and so considered myself lucky.

I crossed a big boulevard lined with fancy apartment buildings – tall stone structures with a big Italian Renaissance gazebo on their roofs, illuminated in yellow and blue. It was not yet 8 and the lightshow building had not turned on so I was flying a bit by wire, not completely sure where I was going. I took a long walk down a very dark street that curved off to the left before meeting a slightly less dark but just as abandoned residential street. In the US or just about any other city in the world you’d be out of your mind to walk in places like this alone. But here, I’ve never had a moment of fear.

Turning right I continued on and just as the clock struck 8, the crazy light appeared before me. Of course the building was on the far side of one of the Ring Roads and it took a lot of maneuvers before I was able to get under and over it to the correct side of the frontage road.

There were three buildings, two tall ones on the ends and one lower one in the middle, not a “district” at all. Each was ringed with what must have been thousands of LED light ropes capable of giving off a full spectrum of colors. From afar it had looked like a random set of flashing lights, but up close I could see a pattern. There were two female figures and they were doing “Choosies”, that childhood game we used to use to pick sides in sports or decide who had to pay for Cokes at the corner store. You and your opponent would pick odds or evens, you’d put your fist behind your back and then you’d say, “Once, twice, thrice, SHOOT” and depending on how many fingers were “thrown”, someone would win. I didn’t know it as a kid but that little activity is an ancient game, common in Rome where it was known as micare digitis - to flash the fingers. There is even a Roman proverb which goes along the lines of “he is honest enough to play micare in the dark.” Over the course of the intervening millennia the name has morphed into Morra and today it is a common gambling game in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Asia under a variety of names. Naturally, the Chinese have their version known as huáquán or “fist quarrel.” So here was a building using a rainbow of lights to show two simple outline-people doing huáquán and with each win, the building changed colors.

I took a lot of photos much to the amusement of passersby who must see the building every night and consider it common. When the street cleared and the security guard disappeared inside, I crept through the trees out front and got a better vantage. It turned out to be nothing more than an office building by the name of Beijing Golden Tower - an average edifice with a quotidian name but with a wonderful means of drawing attention to itself. I mean, it had lured me into walking a couple of miles in the dark.

Mission accomplished I headed back to the hotel, taking about the same route but this time avoiding the completely unlit street, if only to have some better things to look at. Not much was going on, just people walking their dogs and visiting in front of the apartment blocks. I stopped to check out a couple of bicycle stores that I happened to pass. Back at the Ring Road the traffic was still bad. I crossed over on the elevated pedestrian bridge and rounded the corner to the hotel and there I met Li Mei who wanted to know if I was interested in a “massagee”. I told her “no” and started to continue on but she expounded on the offer and told me what she really had in mind was “massagee-sex”. I laughed and said “No thanks” but she handed me her business card at waist level below the potted plant so that the hotel doormen would not see the transaction. It wasn’t clear if she was the actual purveyor or the Director of Sales but I decided not to ask for clarification. I thanked her again and smiling, I went inside.

For once I'm at a loss for a decent title

2010-09-23T07:28:00.004-06:00

It’s hard for me to believe that I am now at the very cusp of returning to a normal life. A life with a wife and cheap long distance and no more Skype for no more than 30 minutes a day. Before all this began it seemed impossible. While it was happening it seemed interminable. And now that it’s over, it’s almost as though it never happened.

My exit from Dalian was an extended feast. It began with a touching tribute delivered by my department members, a wonderful scroll with a picture of everyone and Chinese calligraphy hoping for a visit in the near future. There were speeches and handshakes and hugs and it honestly made me quite sad. Not “I want to stay” sad, but certainly “I’m going to miss these people” sad. We’ve done so much together in what now seems like such a short time. My local staff in a coup that will go down as the finest going away present ever, presented me with a 100 pound Chinese Postman’s bicycle. Of all the possibilities, I can’t imagine a more perfect tribute.

Next stop on the memory parade was the official Intel party. Now normally I hate these things and make it my purpose to escape in the least possible amount of time. But this one was so good – food, friends and conversation – that I actually stayed for the whole time. I surprised myself with that little bit of out of character behavior.

Ben had me over the next night for a more intimate gathering with his wife and a couple of friends. Lots of wine and conversation and a truly outrageous Sichuan repast that will go down in my personal history as a meal not to be forgotten. Rabbit, fish, beef, Chengdu sausage – mouth scorching wonders prepared in my honor. Our reverie was mildly disturbed by the sounding of air raid sirens because on this night some 79 years earlier, the Japanese Army marched into Liaoning and made it home. The sound of the sirens prompted those of us old enough to remember to talk about air raid drills when we were in elementary school. The sirens would sound and we would hide under our desks, safe there from the Soviet hydrogen bombs exploding in an air burst above our cities. Looking back on that now, how did anyone think there was any point to hiding at all?

Now three days into my binge of alcohol, melancholy and goodbyes I had a fantastic dinner – Sichuan again with Jiang, his wife, her friend my standing “Chinese date” and a surprise guest, his brother. Jiang’s wife pulled a fast one on me for a while, calling for a toast each time I praised a dish. It only took me about 8 glasses of Chilean Chardonnay to figure that one out so I turned the table by watching her glass and timing mine to that when I had about one mouthful left and she was holding a full one I would call for “gang bei” – drain the glass. She ended up calling me a bad American. Jiang took me home as things wound down and reported the next day that the women were sitting in our private room drinking beer and crying when he went back to get them.

All those events added up to one long weekend. When Monday rolled around it was time to get serious about the packing and the cleaning. The movers showed up promptly at 9:30 and were done by 1:00. I spent Monday evening taking one last walk around Kai Fa Qu and the night sleeping under an IKEA quilt, staring out at the neon on the Victoria Hotel. Having worked my way past all the personal feelings, this was when it struck home that things were truly coming to an end in Dalian.

Jiang and I had a plan for Tuesday, a trip down the road to Lushun, the city at the end of the peninsula that just recently opened up to foreigners. I thought there was some appropriate closure in this choice as it was the first place I went on my first weekend in Dalian back in 2008. At that time I was only able to part way, stopping at the Guanyin statue by the sea. Beyond that I risked arrest. And so waking up on Tuesday morning and seeing the torrential downpour, I realized that the day was going to be less than I expected.

We left my apartment for the last time at 9:30 and headed out of town. There was a lot to talk about, although none of it was substantive. I thought about how many truly meaningless conversations that Jiang and I had had over the years, just trying to keep the silence at bay. This was one aspect of having a driver that I never really liked – having to make conversation constantly. So many of my colleagues simply sat in the backseat and put their earphones in, but I was blessed (cursed?) with a driver that wanted to talk. Some days it made me crazy, most of the time it was tolerable. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the finer points of aspirin. Jiang was suffering from a toothache and I gave him some to ease the pain. I told him the tale of my fever in Shanghai and the 100mg pills I bought at the government pharmacy. I took 10 in one dose just to approximate my normal dose. The box had 20 pills. He was shocked at how cheap it is in the US, so I gave him the remainder of the card of Mexican Bayer that I had in my bag.

I have a personal history with Lushun that made my presence in this part of the world just a little bit ironic. I’ve always been a history buff and the early 20^th century was a time of particular fascination for me and for some reason the history of this region has always been particularly interesting to me. So many world changing events came to pass in such a short period - the fall of empires, the rise of terrorism, Communism and the emergence of the East. Lushun was originally known as Port Arthur, named for a British captain who towed his damaged gunboat into the harbor for repairs during the Boxer Rebellion. The Russian Empire eventually took over the place by running a spur of the Southern Manchurian Railroad to the city, hoping to use it as their only warm water port in the East. Russia was told to vacate by the western powers but ignored their demands and those of the Qing Dynasty Chinese who had no means to enforce their sovereignty. They held onto it simply by pretending to not hear the complaining. Japan though had the same designs and as they became more and more militaristic at the close of the 19^th century, they simply sailed across the Yellow Sea and sent the Russian Eastern Fleet to the bottom of the harbor thus ending the Russian influence in the area and the start of Japanese hegemony over northern China and Korea. They marched into town and killed some 35,000 people, an event that still causes significant distrust for them in this city. They finally left only to return in 1931 and to stay until they received their due in 1945. Russia once again moved in, having entered WWII in the 11^th hour and remained until their allies, the Chinese Communists dispensed with the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek in 1949.

Jiang was worried that we would not be able to find anything to eat in Lushun – their restaurants are notoriously dangerous (at least in the assessment of Dalian people) so he insisted that we stop at Kentucky Fried Chicken for a take-out lunch. I told him that this was the first and only time that I had eaten KFC in China, and he was genuinely taken aback. He couldn’t understand why I would go so long without partaking of such an American option. Rather than protest, I simply considered that this was going to make this a special day and along with the Lady GaGa CD he had on repeat forever, a day to remember.

We stopped for a look at Heng Shan temple, home to the 50 foot Guanyin but the rain was coming down the valley in sheets and I decided that I didn’t want to spend my time driving around in soaked clothing. We left the temple and went on to the port, stopping at one place to have a look. The weather here was clearly the outer edges of Typhoon Fenapi which happened to be plowing into the southern coast at that very moment – big wind, sideways rain and cold temperatures. A couple of pictures and then up the hill to the “Loyalty Tower” built by the Japanese after their embarrassment of the Russians in 1904. It had a giant stone artillery shell at its apex, and the weather here on this hill was worse than that down by the port. The next several hours were spent driving around out in the middle of nowhere trying to find the overlook from which one can see the mixing of the Bohai Bay and the Yellow Sea. When we finally found it, the gal in the ticket office told us that it was not worth the walk due to the weather. An honest ticket seller at an attraction – wonder of the day! My view of the merging of the two seas would have to wait until another time.

A couple of hours of Lady GaGa and a long drive back and I was at my hotel for the night. I spent my evening dining on tapas and making conversation with my former Chinese teacher Angela before walking one last time through the windswept and unseasonably chilly streets of Dalian proper. A reminded me of the short time during which these streets were the center of my Chinese universe.

Jiang collected me promptly the next morning, a couple of hours before my scheduled departure. He was worried about the traffic, but I had a suspicion that it would not be bad. This was the morning of Mid-Autumn Festival and a national holiday. Everyone would be sleeping in anticipation of a big day of family visiting and Moon Cake eating. We made the trip to the airport quickly. As we said our goodbyes I handed Jiang an early “Hong Bao”, a bonus traditionally given at Chinese New Year’s in February. I had a speech prepared in the event that he argued with me, but he didn’t. Not even for a second. He gladly took it, shook my hand, gave me a hug and said “goodbye.” Our time together was over.

The plane left on time and I had an empty row so I moved over to the window seat. It was an uncharacteristically sunny and clear day, and as we arced up and over the mountains I could see Kai Fa Qu far off in the distance, the two smoke stacks of the local power plant were framing the area of my old neighborhood. We rose up about the coastal mountains and crossed out over the Bo Hai. As we left the land behind us, I could clearly see the brown of the Bo Hai merging with the deep blue of the Yellow Sea. Coastal cargo ships were plying their way through the white caps, casting long white wakes. I sat back, looked out the window and thought about the next phase of my life, realizing that I was a damn lucky guy.

Trip to Taiwan Take Six - some final thoughts

2010-09-16T03:40:00.006-06:00

There wasn’t much time left or stuff to do by the time we got back to Taipei from our Hualien trip. It was still daylight so we decided to go have a look at the Tuned Mass Damper that keeps Taipei 101 from falling over in a big wind. And big winds here are problem as the city lies on the Typhoon Track from the East Pacific to coastal China.

The Damper was designed by a guy in Ben’s graduating class so it had a small personal connection. I was just beginning to feel the effects of the bad dumplings and that feeling had been worsened by the back and forth nature of the high speed train. But I am nothing if not a trooper so I got on the World’s Fastest Elevator and took the 40 second ride to the 91st floor.

The view in the late afternoon was nothing compared to what we had seen during dinner earlier on our trip. It was a bit cloudy off to the west and so even the sunset was muted. I wandered around the observation deck, checking out the four cardinal points before going in and having a look at what we had come to see. I passed a sign advertising a “Beer Float” - a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a 1 liter Taiwan Beer - and kept right on walking.

The Tuned Mass Damper is a 730 ton alloy sphere suspended in the upper reaches of the building. It hangs there silently, imposingly so, waiting to go to work in a high wind or a big earthquake. There is a bad video on Youtube showing the ball doing its work during the aftershocks from 2008 Sichuan quake. It’s an amazing thing to watch something that big swing around and around.

Of course there are mascots – Damper Babies – who welcome you to the room. You walk down two flights of stairs and you can look straight at it which affords you a better idea of how the thing works. It’s attached to the floor below the 89th by a series of shock absorbers. When the build tilts left, the ball naturally goes right and when it does it presses down on the shock absorbers and pushes the building back to its normal position. Pretty clever, and despite the ear popping elevator ride and the gantlet of retail you had to pass to leave, it was a nice topper to a great weekend. I can say that if I ever choose to cross the International Dateline heading west again, it will be on the way here. It’s a place worth seeing again.

Click on this picture to see the animation.

Trip to Taiwan Take Five - Bikes and Trains

2010-09-14T04:30:00.007-06:00

I’m not ashamed to admit that while traveling in Asia, I tend to be a bit of a hotel snob. 5-Star accommodations are so cheap here compared to the west that it’s very easy to reconcile spending the same amount to stay on the Club Level in Beijing as you would pay for a plain room on Ray Road in Chandler, Arizona. While I shop hard when traveling in the US, I get wed to some chain over here and when picking a destination I hunt first to see if that brand is represented. If not, I go down the list until I find something close enough. Of course many of the cities that I have visited simply don’t have first tier hotels, but I can always find something that is no worse than the average hotel in the US. While I eschewed my normal Marriott/Shangri La choice in Taipei, instead deciding to slum it at the Grand Hyatt, it worked out well enough. The room was cold and well appointed.

Hualien though was another story. And compounding that was the fact that we didn’t plan to stay in Hualien but rather out in the countryside at a “farm house” that was recommended by Ben’s college friend. We had a lot of laughs, most of it gallows humor, trying to decide if it was indeed a house, or if it was a hotel. Did it have bathrooms and would we each have our own space? As the time for us to find the place approached and it became dark, the laughter took on a decidedly nervous tone. It turned out though to be a very nice place – 8 tiny cabins tucked in the banana trees about an hour outside of town across the street from Liyu Hu – Carp Lake - one of the local tourist destinations. We arrived, checked in and sat out on the porch drinking wine and listening to the Geckos bark while making plans for the next day. It was darker than dark and dead silent and for the first time in ages I could see the stars in a manner that was similar to what I would expect back home. The rooms were clean, tidy and very simple – knotty pine paneling, bed, dresser, make-up table and a clean bathroom that naturally had that most odd of Chinese inventions – the shower that is the room. Basically a showerhead on the wall with no stall or curtain which of course means that the whole place gets flooded when the water is turned on. The towels were special, harkening back to the story of My Lovely Wife and Cousin Barbara’s Dubious 1-Star Tour of Europe in which the bath linens were famous for their diminutive size. Mine was about the dimension of a dish towel, but at least I had two.
But best of all was the wall air conditioner. The proprietor came to my room and asked me what temperature I wanted, starting at 77F and then gasping as I kept saying “lower” until we hit 68. I told him that Americans like it cold. Nice, as it was a jungle outside.

Just after sunrise we went out for a walk around the little town. It was like lakeside tourist traps the world over, a long drag with dozens of little food stalls and souvenir shops across the street from a public park that fronted the lake. Everything sat in a green valley hemmed in by the same mountains that we had driven through the previous day. We found a woman with an espresso machine and had a cup of coffee as we wandered down the waterfront which was crowded with concessions renting paddle boats in the oddest configurations. My favorite was a swan boat with a Spoonbill head, the bird looking forward as though over its non-existent reading glasses. We sat and drank coffee and watched Night Herons fighting over a little mud island off shore. Far off in the middle of the lake, a person wearing the traditional rural Chinese conical straw hat sat in a low slung ancient motor boat chugging along on their way to somewhere, the boat’s wake being the only disturbance on an otherwise glass surface.

Our place turned out to be a bed and breakfast of sorts and our morning repast was delivered to our porches. Some strange piece of pulpy green fruit, sweet Nescafe coffee and a ham and egg sandwich served on two slices of Taiwanese Wonder Bread; or Bimbo if you prefer. After eating we went down to the office to look for bicycles because this was our opportunity to cycle on a bike path that would make my western peers cry with envy.

I am a pretty serious cyclist, so it was quite interesting for me to thumb through the available bikes, all urban cruisers with baskets and rusty seat posts, no doubt from living in this climate. I chose one and raised the seat as high as it could go, knowing that it would still look like I was riding a clown bike. But off we went, riding up the main highway and turning left onto a beautifully paved two lane road that wrapped around the backside of the lake. We rode along through the jungle, stopping to look at the view across the lake and to take in the flowery sites – red flowers, yellow flowers, purple Clematis. And more butterflies than I have ever seen - blues, turquoise, yellow, orange, black, white, red, spotted, striped and plain – every flower seemed to be covered with them. Taiwan has an incredible selection. Overhead, flocks of bright green birds that were new to me. It was so beautiful that you could almost overlook the fact that you were bathed in sweat. We stopped at one pull off to take in the sights and the sounds and friendly little lizard decided to climb on my shoe for a visit.

As we headed back to the ranch we passed a very nice Giant (brand) bicycle shop, put there solely for rentals. Great bikes and supplies and I imagine busy as heck in the high season. Behind it was a fish hatchery that seemed for some strange reason to specialize in Koi and other aquarium species.

The rest of the day was devoted to getting back to Hualien and our train. We spent quite a bit of time upstairs at Starbucks sharing the internet and watching the time tick by. Lunch was dumplings at the place next door to the one we had eaten in previously, our favorite being sadly closed on this day. No air conditioning here, and I wasn’t having the best of feelings as I sat there watching them hand stuff blanks of dough without gloves in the 90 degree heat. As it would turn out my uneasiness was well founded judging how I began to feel as our train pulled out of the station. By the time we reached Taipei it was clear that some food borne bug was about to have its way with me. Not the first time and almost certainly not the last.

Trip to Taiwan Take Four - Train and Taroko

2010-09-13T05:41:00.013-06:00

The train left the central Taipei Station at precisely 8:00 AM and spent a long time traveling in darkness before finally emerging into the bright morning sunshine. The tunnel was long and jet black and offered no clue to the blue sky that awaited us, one only slightly tinged with high wispy clouds, the product of a Pacific typhoon developing far off to our east over the Philippine Sea.

We were riding the Taroko Express, a high speed rail (HSR) down the coast to the port city of Hualien. It is always nice to ride modern trains in foreign lands – they do rail travel oh, so well. This one was particularly nice – clean, modern, comfortable and built in a way that allowed it to take the multitude of sharp turns along its way with only the slightest tip to the inside. While not as fast as Japan’s Shinkansen, the Taroko moved along at a respectable 70 or so miles per hour heading first due east from Taipei before turning straight south on a route that hugged the coast while passing through numerous tunnels in the coastal mountains. I set my camera to a high ISO and a higher shutter speed and sat by the window mesmerized by the verdant jungle that was flowing by my window. Once far from the city, we broke out of the mountainous green belt and traveled along empty gray gravel beaches that stretched for miles, providing a neutral color break between the azure and turquoise sea and the tropical plants that stood between the tracks and the edge of the strand. Every once in a while we would pass under one of the coastal spurs and emerge from the darkness into a broad valley, the product of some unnamed river that was flowing down out of the mountains. We were entering Taiwan’s Eastern Rift Valley and the home to Taroko Gorge.

The geology and geography of Taiwan are typical of that of the Ring of Fire. In this case, the tiny Philippine Plate is being pushed under the much larger Eurasian Plate by the ever expanding Pacific sea floor. The result is that Taiwan is surprisingly mountainous, with more than 20 peaks topping 10,000 feet. On the west, broad flat plains have developed as a result of sediment being carried down from the central mountains, a classic fault-block of limestone that has been forced up by the imposing plates. On the east the newer mountains fall directly into the sea and there is not a lot of flat land between the peaks and the ocean. The Eastern Rift Valley is a product of this push and pull of the plates and is a tourists dream with lakes, gorges and villages and a bicycle path that would me cry. It starts at Hualien and heads off to the southwest before disappearing under the cordillera. Geologically active, it is the also home to numerous hot springs and a regular source of earthquakes.

Hualien County is Taiwan’s largest, and Hualien City is of a medium size with around 100,000 inhabitants. It was initially founded by a small migration of Han Chinese farmers who entered the area in the late 1800’s. Before that it was the home to the Truku, Ami, Atayal and Bunyun people, four of the seven indigenous tribes of the island. The Spanish tried and failed to make a go of mining gold in 1622, and aside from that the area was largely neglected by outsiders due to its remoteness. At the beginning of the Japanese Colonial period the city was renamed from Kilai to Karen by the occupiers as the original name had a bad connotation in Japanese. When Taiwan became the Republic of China in 1949, it assumed its current name.

The train rolled past the occasional cement plant, a testament to the amount of limestone in the region. Marble mining is a very big industry here and the product is renowned for its beauty and subtlety. Take coral reefs that have fossilized into limestone, heat and compress them under the pressure of a crustal plate, push them up and stand them on their ear and the result is a never ending supply of materials for monuments and kitchen counters the world over. Outcrops of the raw stuff could be seen in every road cut. Bright white with the thinnest streaks of black.

We arrived at Hualien Station on time and met our guide for the day, Mr. Lin. He was different and he reminded me quite a bit of Tse Tan, my guide in Tibet. Short, a bit stocky with no Chinese features at all, Mr. Lin was clearly from one of the tribes. He wore a beaded and belled satchel over one shoulder that made quiet tinkling noises as he walked. We got into his van and decided to stop for lunch since there would not be many opportunities up where we were going. Mr. Lin dropped us at a street market and we chose a dumpling stall based on the availability of air conditioning – traveling south had not done much for the heat or the humidity.

We were certainly the objects of attention in this place as we sat eating steamed dumplings and da shao bao (stuffed and steamed dough rolls) while drinking the house sweet tea. Red shirted employees scurried around rolling and steaming under the direction of a middle-aged woman in a black and gold pantsuit who was barking orders and waving her arms this way and that. She was very glad to have us in her place and when left I turned to take a photo and she shot me the “V” sign and a big smile. After a quick visit to Starbucks (yes, even in Hualien) we went off to our first stop, the former command center of the Japanese Air Force during World War II.

One of the striking things about the coasts over here is just how much they look like Northern California. Twisted pines, cedars, low scrub on the ground – you could just as easily be in Monterey or Arcata. This spot was no different, sitting atop a hill overlooking the sea; it was beautiful and peaceful and I would be very glad if it were my home. Mr. Lin told us how this was the place where the Kamikaze pilots spent their last nights before leaving from an airfield down the hill and heading out to see if they could find an American ship to destroy. I stood there under the pine boughs contemplating leaving such a wonderful spot to go out and wreck such havoc in the name of a far off emperor who could not grasp that the war was over. Having just finished a well-written book (Retribution by Max Hastings) about the war on Japan, the spot was even more meaningful. I turned and looked through the trees at the view of the ocean and wondered how anyone could leave here to do what they had to do.

We left town on Highway 8, the Central Cross Island Highway. It’s an interesting road, built between 1956 and 1960 to connect the coasts; it follows the path of the Liwu River. As we would come to see, it’s a tough road, hand carved in many places and today always in need of repair due to the constant landslides associated with earthquakes. Its complete closure is often debated but so far no one can agree. But it is also the only easy access to Taroko Gorge National Park, one of the island’s treasures. Taroko was declared a park in 1937 by the Japanese Colonial Government and “un-parked” in a fit of pique by the triumphant Nationalists in 1951. It remained without title until it was once again designated in 1986. The name purportedly comes from a Truku word meaning magnificent and beautiful which was blurted by an intrepid tribesman who came down out of the mountains and saw the sea for the first time.

The road was slow and twisty and beautiful as canyon roads often are. When went up and up until we reached the parking area for the Shakanding Trail, a path that led up one of the spurs of the gorge. The water below was deep turquoise in spots and the rocks all manners of colors and stripes. Aside from the heat it was pretty easy going - the path was well maintained and gained elevation very slowly. We stopped here and there to take photos and to admire the weaving of one indigenous man. I had to laugh, in China these few people along a path would be selling beer, cigarettes, Cokes and ice cream and the path ahead would be strewn with the subsequent trash. This man was sitting under an umbrella with a small loom and weaving the finest and most delicates sashes in bright yellows, greens and mangos. I asked about the price and it was very steep, but he told me that every piece took two and half days to weave. I thanked him and we walked on.

At the top of the trail we took a rough track down onto the canyon floor where a handful of Chinese families were wading in the blue water. Mr. Lin explained that this was a special place where tiny fish would come and clean your feet if you would let them. I stripped off my socks and shoes and waded in. Sure enough, once the water had calmed down and they perceived no threat, dozens of little fish from an inch to as much as three began nibbling on my toes. It was really an odd experience and felt like tiny suction cups grabbing and releasing.

Back at the car we continued up the canyon through small tunnels that had clearly been dug by hand and chisel. The river was perhaps 50 feet below but you could see places on the wall at the level of the road where the river had rushed by in the past. Signs everywhere warned of getting beaned by rocks and when we walked past a group of Japanese men on some sort of camera tour, we wondered if we shouldn’t have stopped for the loaner hard hats as they had.

After another short trail through a Camphor tree forest which smelled unbelievably refreshing and a walk through a pine forest that had many carved memorials to Japanese who died in landslides in these hills, we spent some time walking back and forth on a true rope bridge that spanned the canyon from side to side. It was not for the faint of heart or anyone with a dislike of heights is it jumped and swayed as you walked across. I loved it, other didn’t and no one seemed to be happy with how low the railing went in the center as part of its natural dip. I spent a long time in the center talking photos of the cataract below. It was beautiful.

The last stop in the canyon was at a memorial built to the 265 men who lost their lives building this road. A secular temple across the river at the top of some delicate waterfalls was accompanied by a more traditional Taoist temple up in the trees – both beautiful.

Our sightseeing concluded at the beach where we sat and looked out at the deep blue sea. People wandered about eating and walking their dogs and judging from the guys on the Jet Skis who were wearing wet suits, just about no one was going to be interested in a dip in what must have been a very cold ocean. The sea was a bit rough, waves driven no doubt by that storm that was somewhere out there. But you would never know it – there were but a few clouds that clung to the rugged black hills that formed the coast and no wind at all. It was very beautiful spot.

Dinner was at an interesting restaurant – all organic including the plates and the building which were made of local Juniper wood. I had a set meal – some kind of smoked pork, tofu, soup, three different kinds of cold pickled vegetables and two things that I was very excited about –Taro root and rice steamed in a banana leaf – true Hualien cuisine. Despite its purple-ness, the Taro was like a sweet, sweet potato and rice was just plain great. We sat under whirling fans drinking cold Taiwan beer and watching as dusk came up, a really fine end to a really fine day.

Taiwan Trip Take Three - A Day in Taipei

2010-09-11T22:19:00.010-06:00

Pulling back the drapes for a first morning look I could see that Taipei stretched far off below me on a board flat plain that was finally hemmed in on western horizon by green, jungly mountains. The sky was mostly clear and bright blue and the buildings were warmly lit by the early morning sun. None of them were tall – everything was on the order of 2-20 stories and certainly no competition for the Blue Giant on the other side of the hotel. I cleaned up and dressed and went downstairs to the quite impressive breakfast buffet, easily one of the best I’d been to. After eating we met in the lobby and left on foot in search of the Taipei Metro station that was somewhere in the vicinity of City Hall which sat kitty-corner to the front of our hotel. We passed a group of young German men shooting a commercial for a very fancy surveying device – not a shocker considering Taipei’s place in the world of high-tech manufacturing. Behind them were some garden sculptures – a golden raindrop with legs and a face talking to a tiger and a group of sprites taking turns looking through a telescope. Stuff like this is so common in Asia that while I always take a photo, it hardly rates as unusual. I only wish is that I could understand just what the designers are thinking when they cook them up.

The station was on the far side of the municipal complex, not far but the walk was oppressive due to the heat and the humidity. And it was only 8:30; I was glad for my sunscreen. Traveling down the escalator though helped instantly with the heat. We had a long walk down a cool marble corridor just as welcoming as the one we used at the airport to enter Taiwan. The floors were clean, the lighting pleasant and the walls were lined with art and tasteful advertising. We bought day passes knowing that we would be riding all over town, entered through the turnstiles and went downstairs to an equally neat, lit and clean platform where we caught a train with the same remarkable conditions.

We had a couple of objectives for the day. First, we needed to go to the main train station to collect our tickets for the next day’s trip down the coast. Second, we wanted to see the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial complex to pay our respects to that figure of history. In between the two were a couple of “temple stops” and being the sucker for temples that I am, I insisted. After much grumbling everyone conceded to my pleas and we stopped first at Shandao Temple to have a look.

I’ve been to all kinds of religious structures in the region, from tiny Taoist shrines in forest clearings to massive Ming-style modern temples in the north. But I’ve never been to one that looked like an American embassy. Shandao was apparently a modern Buddhist center and school and while probably a temple too it didn’t grab anyone’s interest. Too much blocky pink granite and wrought iron fencing and nary an upturned roof to be seen. We went down the escalator about as fast as we had come up and caught the next train.

Longshan Temple was another story altogether. We discovered that we had accidentally landed in the middle of an historical district on the edge of the market we had left last night. Qingshui, the temple we’d found in the dark the night before was listed on a landmark sign along with another - Qingshan - and a restored neighborhood by the name of Bopiliao, whose name alone “skin peeling” demanded a visit. But Longshan was right in front of us so that was where we started.

As I’d mentioned previously, Taiwanese temples were an incredibly different feast for the eyes. Adorned with dragons and birds and tiny people they were far more ornate than those I have visited. Most of the structures in the city were built in the early Qing Dynasty (1st through 3rd decade of the 1700’s) by the thousands of Fujianese immigrants who came to the island during that period. Where most temple architecture I’ve seen has been brightly painted and heavily carved, Longshan took both of those arts to a completely new level. Every ten foot long dragon was made of thousands of individually carved and painted spikes of wood, creating a most unusual and prickly design. The roof tiles and eaves were equally as bright and made busier by all those tiny saints riding horses, taming animals and fighting battles. It was hard to decide where to look first, and it was clear that you could spend an entire day just photographing details. Inside the main gate, the front courtyard had a big waterfall off to the right side which helped a bit with the heat, which was now starting to become quite oppressive. It also added a pleasant sound to the surroundings. We entered the second gate and went into the inner courtyard.

Buddhism in China is not as pure as that found in India and Tibet. It’s often found mixed on sites with Taoism and with the “temples” associated with the Confucian school of thought. The latter is not considered a religion per se, but rather a philosophical guide to life. But you still see Chinese lighting incense and praying in the same in manner in front of statues of Confucius as you do in front of Buddha. In Liaoning where I live, it is not uncommon to see Buddhist miaos standing side by side with Taoist guans on some holy site. In Dalian the two faiths share multiple stops on the long climb up Da Hei Shan, the mountain that commands our northern skyline. Here though, and for the first time, I found Buddhist and Taoist shrines and altars in the same complex, perhaps some unique aspect of the southern Chinese manner of observation. In Ben’s words, here it’s less about the tenets of the belief system than providing a means for people to have their needs met. Thinking about that, I recalled just how crowded with Chinese the Jokhang in Lhasa was on the day before university entrance exams. We wandered around watching the observant and stopping to look at the Buddhas, saints and Immortals that were tucked away in the cool, dark recesses. The holy figures were lucky to be out of the sun.

Bopiliao turned out to be a fascinating stop, an old 19th century neighborhood shoved to the side by the Japanese and left more or less intact. Many of the buildings had been restored and turned into galleries and shops. Some were used to house fascinating and poignant displays of photos of neighborhood life throughout the 20th century. Simple people going about their lives, celebrating weddings and children playing in the streets. It reminded me of my early life growing up in the inner city and made me realize just how alike we all are. There was a long courtyard behind the main set of buildings and it served as sort of an arboretum with trees and bushes labeled as to their species and their use. Here, I got to see my first Banyan tree up close, marveling at how it was crushing the life out of a brick wall. More surprising was a Breadfruit tree, a plant that figured large in my literary memory as being the chief reason for the voyage of the HMS Bounty to the South Seas in the 1700’s. Of course we know how that turned out and I still recall the scene as Marlon Brando and his merry mob of mutineers pelted Trevor Howard with potted plants as he and his loyal crewmen were forced into long boats for their perilous voyage back to civilization. The tree was a monster, very tall with giant lobed leaves that gave a lot of shade.

We left Bopiliao without ever getting to the bottom of the skin peeling mystery heading off in the direction of our next stop, Qingshan Temple. According to Ben, this was an old red light district and by “old” I was not sure if he meant venerated or populated by old women because it certainly seemed to be both. The sidewalks were narrow and crowded with goods that were spilling out of the shops we passed. I was at the head of our single file following an older Chinese man who was walking forward with a purpose - slightly hunched over but clearly driving forward for a reason that quickly became obvious. As we moved forward, a single, highly overdressed middle-aged woman would appear out of every pool of shade or dark side alley, taking his arm and whispering in his ear, falling off only when they entered the next personal enterprise zone. No one said a word to me, I assume due to the language barrier although one did ask Ben if he was interested in drinking tea. I felt sorry for the guy ahead of me, he was like walking flypaper and only when we cleared the block did the insects stop their assault on him. He never once looked up and I assumed his obvious drive was due to many such walks down this street.

Qingshan turned out to be an interesting combination of a Taoist temple and a family restaurant. The family element was busy cleaning pots and washing dishes for that night’s celebrations and the deities were sitting and watching passively. We took a quick spin and left the folks to their morning chores.

We stopped to look at the roof of another cultural relic, the Xinhui Academy, marveling once again at the intricate carvings. Down the street there was an interesting racket – some sort of Buddhist techno music and a host of barking dogs. Usually this means an outdoor street restaurant or some agglomeration of repairmen and vendors but what slowly presented itself was nothing of the sort. Eight Buddhist monks were approaching pushing carts, the lead of which had five happy barking dogs tethered to the front. Up top – spinning prayer wheels, burning incense globes and shrines with tiny Buddhas. Each cart was covered with a black cloth with gold writing in Chinese characters. We stood staring and wondering if we were really seeing this procession as it approached and passed. Ben translated and the message was “our purpose is to provide safety and comfort for the abandoned street animals, dogs and cats. And by the way, we buy houses.” A mobile animal rescue and real estate temple.

A fast subway ride took us to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial which was grand in size about to the point of disbelief. The complex has four main parts, a large pai feng or Chinese gate borders an enormous open plaza of white brick set in geometric patterns. To one side is the National Hall of Music which serves as the main venue of concerts in Taipei. I was sad to see that we had missed Joshua Redman by one day and Eliane Elias by two. Across the way was the National Concert Hall which is the home to the Taipei Symphony. Both of these were done in incredibly oversized Ming Dynasty Style. At the far end of the plaza stood Chiang’s Hall which bore a remarkable resemblance to the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. In fact, the whole place smacked of the Forbidden City which I found quite ironic considering Chiang’s role in putting an end to the imperial era in China. Unlike the major cultural sites in Beijing, you’d be hard pressed to find a missing brick or an errant weed.

After taking a few minutes to visit a luxurious garden to have a look at some very interesting trees, I took the long walk up the plaza and climbed the stairs to Chiang’s Hall. He sat at the far end, very Abraham Lincoln-like with an interesting smile on his big bronze face. Kind of what you’d expect if he had just put his feet in a bucket of hot water after a hard day of war-lording and nation-building. Off to the side, his two honor guards stood stock still in crisp greens and chrome helmets. An attendant in a black suit would come over occasionally and mop their brow with a handkerchief. Overhead the most beautiful carved wood ceiling framed a dome that depicted the sun that serves as the chief logo on this nation’s flag.

After a stop at the train station for the tickets and a couple of photos of some more strange art including a genderless manikin with a giant bird head that spewed water from its neck into a bed of grass, we caught the subway to the Imperial Museum in the hills on the far side town. There is a reason why the Forbidden City is more or less devoid of artifacts, and that reason is that they are here. When the Japanese invaded the mainland in the 1930’s, the Nationalist Government had the presence of mind to bundle up all the cultural treasures in the former palace. They were carted about, one step ahead of the advancing Japanese armies until the war was over. When the civil war broke out, they were in the procession of Chiang’s Kuomintang and when he evacuated to Taiwan in 1949, he brought as much with him as he could, housing the goods in a new museum. The collection was impressive, but not as impressive as I had expected. It took far less time to see what I wanted to see, but what was there was still quite beautiful. Thousands of pieces of bronze, ages worth of ceramics and many, many paintings and scrolls including one from the 12th century that depicted all the common birds in the Emperor’s garden. No photos allowed though, so sadly no personal records.

We caught a cab ride back to the hotel we gathered for the final even of the day, dinner at Diamond Tony’s on the 85th floor of Taipei 101. A very fancy and confusing restaurant but with the most spectacular view you could imagine. The menu was very complex and pretty hard to understand but the food was excellent when it did arrive and they were kind enough to seat us at a window table when one cleared out so that we could enjoy a few minutes of the view before we left. I took shots and marveled at how they looked more like something taken from an airplane than from a building, the effect I suppose of being a third of a mile up in the sky.

All in all a very nice day in a wonderful city. Wonderful enough that it made me want to come back, preferably though when the sun was a bit lower in the sky.

Trip to Taiwan Take Two

2010-09-10T07:34:00.011-06:00

Street carousing was the order of the night but first we needed dinner so we caught a cab out front and directed the driver to take us to Din Tai Fung, the preeminent xiao long bao (steamed dumpling) restaurant in Taipei. In 1993 the New York Times named it one of the 10 Best Restaurants in the World so my expectations were high, doubled in fact as this year they had received a One Star Rating from Michelin. It was late rush hour but the streets were mostly deserted. The cab – a classic yellow – was clean, new and smoke free, something you would never find on the mainland. I hate to admit it but my bitterness was slowly growing tempered only by the fact that it’s probably better that I had not just spent the last two years here, because in only 5 hours it was clear to me that I would have a hard time leaving. Even Ben, committed to his mainland life was beginning to talk about retiring here in his homeland.

We left the hotel circle and caught RenAi Road towards the heart of the city - a beautiful street, tree lined and covered overhead with dense green from side to side. Two lanes up the middle and two outer lanes allowing parking and access to the blocks of apartments and shops, the basic prosperity of Taipei evident in everything from the people to the cars to the pin neat and lush medians. Not the glitzy, showy wealth of Shanghai but rather an understated self-confidence that comes from people long accustomed to a higher quality of life. Again, Japan kept coming through, but you could tell from the people on these streets that they were not nearly so bound by the austere traditions of their northern neighbors and formers masters. Rather, these folks just seemed to be enjoying a velvety tropical evening by having a walk down a boulevard that anyone would be hard-pressed to find a problem with knowing full well that they were lucky and blessed to have such an opportunity. Ben sat up front talking to the cabbie alternating easily between Chinese and English. I just sat there listening and staring out the window glad that I had taken the time to come here. I knew it would only get better.

We pulled up in front of a tiny restaurant in a busy shopping district – not at all what I was expecting, because a place in Dalian with these kind of bona fides as though there could possibly be one) would have been one of those traditional red velvet, gold filigree and marble monstrosities that form the universal symbol for wealth in China. No, this was my kind of place – a long white tiled diner with a lot of noise, good smells and abundant people. We had a reservation but the table was not ready. In a demonstration of clear-headed restaurant management, one of the girls out front handed us an order form and told us to pick what we wanted – our food would be ready when it was time to sit down. Again, the conversation took place in a nice mix of California English and Chinese, and they loved the fact that I could carry my own in both. There were 6 girls in spotless white shirts and black skirts using headsets to communicate with the kitchen while chit-chatting with the clientele.

There was a big poster on the front window with about a hundred choices shown in tiny color photographs with numbers, Chinese and English descriptions. We picked a few and Ben picked some childhood favorites and then we simply stood back and enjoyed the scene, flirting with the waitresses and assessing the customers. When we got called we were led inside through a spotless lower dining room set right in the middle of the dumpling production that led to some stairs up to the second floor where we were seated at a table in a brightly lit, utterly clean, pretty packed yet surprisingly quiet dining room. Tea was delivered and we ordered beers – Taiwan Gold Star in keeping with the theme of the evening - and sat back. Small saucers of soy sauce with shaved baby ginger were delivered next followed by a plate of cold, pickled cabbage leaves, soup and a plate of greens. The biggest miracle was that there was no smoking – outside of trips to the US, I could honestly not recall the last time I ate out without compromising on that point.

The dumplings began to arrive and they were wonderful – delicate, tasty, impeccably prepared and presented. The dumpling cooks bring them up themselves – young men in white, wearing face masks – could this place get any better? I felt like I had fallen asleep in the wilds and awakened in civilization. The cooks were friendly and gracious when you thanked them for the order. Each course was better than the last and I was sorry when I couldn’t convince myself that I needed to try another type. We paid up and headed out to the first of the pedestrian streets we planned on visiting, this one right around the block where the specialty was desert.

Like so many cities in the tropics, Taipei comes alive once the sun sets. While the evenings remain warm and moist, once the sun is off the back of your neck life on the street takes a decided upturn in quality. The city has a number of “night markets”, each with unique specialties and different degrees of urban sophistication. The one behind our restaurant was relatively small and not very busy and we strolled for about a block before Ben found what he was looking for, a true Taiwanese delicacy – mango shaved ice. Like every tradition in Asia this one had been mildly modernized – the stall was tiled, brightly lit, the workers had matching bright polo shirts and baseball caps and the menu offerings had catchy cold clime names like “blizzard” and “avalanche”. We decided on one plate of mango and one of mulberry and lychee. We grabbed a table on the sidewalk and pulled up three bar stools. The kids working in the back caught me taking their picture and cheerfully struck the traditional Chinese photo pose – smiling and throwing a “V” sign. Our food arrived, a big pile of fresh fruit and syrup sitting atop a mound of the finest and coldest shaved ice I had ever seen. It was like snow and it was delicious and such a great follow-up to our just completed steamed dinner.

Another cab took us past the brightly lit Presidential Palace and off to Ximending Market, a modern version of the place we just left. For the first time in the trip we found ourselves mired in traffic – this place is very popular. The cabbie suggested that we hoof it for the last block so we paid up and hopped out; crossing a main intersection choked with dozens of the now ubiquitous scooters. Ximending turned out to be much like pedestrian walking districts everywhere the world from Santa Monica to Grafton Street in Dublin, but with an incredible vitality. The lights and the designs were like nothing I’d seen, a giant golden head atop a curry restaurant, a café crammed from floor to ceiling with giant stuffed animals, a huge rotating wheel of anime sushi that announced a second floor restaurant and laser designs dancing on the sidewalks, emanating from somewhere up above. Hundreds of teenagers moved in flocks, still in their school uniforms catching a quick meal while gossiping with their friends and checking out the opposite sex. Tattoo parlors spilled out into the path and fresh fruit vendors displayed their colorful ware in the middle of the broader lanes. A bright orange shop labeled “Condom World” was surprisingly empty. The anchor for the place was the newly restored Grand Concert Hall built in the early 1900’s, all brick and nicely illuminated with soft white spots, imparting a stately elegance. We wandered up and down a few streets taking in the sights and smells; I stopped for a chocolate donut figuring I it was an opportunity I wouldn’t have again - it was worth it. Another thing became apparent as we roamed around this place – the Taiwanese are very friendly. They make eye contact, they smile and they’re happy to talk – none of the feeling of invisibility you get wandering around where we live. It was very refreshing.

Having now seen the neighborhood variety market and the modern option, we grabbed another cab and headed to Ximen Market, home to the infamous Snake Alley where broken-hearted men are taken to solve “those” kinds of problems. The Alley is a long covered arcade with shops on both sides and a peaked metal roof above lined with blue twinkle lights. Given its purpose and reputation I was expecting something seedier, ala 1930’s Hollywood noir, but it seemed nice enough and not very threatening – no fog rolling in, no crates, no dark corners and no mysterious shadowy figures off to the side. Each shop had a wall lined with terrariums and cages holding an interesting variety of snakes. There was typically a tout behind a counter with a microphone extolling the virtue of their products, and in every case there was a handwritten “No Photos” sign at the entrance. Whether this was to protect their trade secrets, the anonymity of the customers or romance of the location, I cannot say. But I will mention that it was strictly enforced and I saw more than one stroller get yelled at and hurried off by the proprietors.

The process is simple. Some gal whose guy is suffering from a lack of resolve takes him by the hand and leads him to the Alley where together they purchase a snake. The poor animal is prepared by the chef, the gall bladder is removed and the bile is extracted and drunk by the man. Then the couple enjoys a nice snack of stir-fried snake meat and tea and they go home, presumably, to a night of reptilian passion. No idea if it works – no one wanted to be interviewed. The places were interesting though and I did manage to sneak one clandestine photo of a woman who claimed to have the world’s largest Burmese Python. Whether he was on the menu or just an attraction, I don’t know. I might be worried that devouring his gall bladder might result in one of those “greater than 4 hours” visits to the doctor.

Snake Alley eventually ended at a T intersection and we took a right turn. Here the nature of the products changed, becoming more what you’d expect from a Chinese street market – food stands, fish markets, and cheap consumer goods. We went looking for a draught beer, famous in these parts but were put off when the woman operating the only machine we could find picked up a beer glass and released the only mouse-sized cockroach I’ve ever seen. We passed booths piled high with pig’s feet, hocks, all manners of fish and fowl and some interesting crabs with three big brown-ringed white dots on their carapaces that are known locally by the quite unexpected name “san ban” or “three spot.”

We stopped at a booth that was offering Ear Candling and a handful of young women were in the process of having the procedure done. A long white cotton tube is soaked in wax and placed in a big plastic bottle about the size of a gallon milk jug. The tip of the bottle is placed in your ear (with your head resting sideways on a pillow) and the candle is lit. The theory is that the flame creates a vacuum inside the cotton tube that in turn draws debris out of your ears. When the candle is burned down the bottle is removed along with all the displaced junk from the inside of your head. The guy selling the process was begging us to sit down and give it a go, but there was no way someone was going to insert a burning torch in the side of my head, benefits or not. (It should be noted that the Chinese are obsessively weird about earwax. Theirs is different than ours, lacking a gene that renders it dry instead of moist. I don’t think that makes it any different in its function, it’s just one of those strange little genetic remnant from the time when our grandparents wandered out of Africa. I've had at least one offer to have my ears cleaned in situ and it was while I was sitting in a bar in Lijiang, Yunnan and by a guy of indeterminate ethnicity who took the time to show me the quality of his tiny stainless steel scooping instruments.) We watched for a while before the seller told us to get lost as we were stifling his business.

It was getting late and so after passing one last stand that was selling those same mouse-sized cockroaches as pets (I knew that beer loving fellow was not wild) we back out of the market and into some silent streets where we surprisingly stumbled upon Qishan Temple. It was of course closed for the evening, but even so, there illuminated by only a few weak streetlights, I could see that it was very different than the temples I was used to. Far more ornate, baroque and a tiny bit scarier. Clearly the rendering of the dragons, phoenixes and other beasts were strongly influenced by the aesthetic of the southern mainland immigrants and not so much by the Ming and Manchu northerners. Completely different was the host of tiny people that roamed just below the eaves, depictions of various saints, demons and fairies. I looked forward to a daytime visit to one of these beauties.

We caught a cab back to the hotel and spent some time in the bar admiring the duo singing American pop tunes. She had great voice and he was handy with the guitar. Every nice bar I visit on this side of the world has just such a duo versus the taverns in Dalian that tend to be entertained by sleazy Filipina bands fronted by girls in hot pants and boys with a rather strong androgynous slant. The better places in Shanghai, Japan and now Taipei usually have pairs that cover jazz standards and modern love songs. Often they’re Americans and they always bring to mind the group in that wonderful movie, “Lost in Translation.” Of tonight’s pair, he was Chinese and she appeared to be some sort of Eurasian with a strong western component. They were pleasant and cheery and a nice cap for the evening.

Trip to Taiwan Take One

2010-09-10T06:44:00.002-06:00

Taiwan is an easy two hour flight across the sea from Dalian and I’d been thinking for the past year that it might be a nice adventure, perhaps one in contrast to the varied places I’d been on the mainland. When my colleague Ben, a native Taiwanese suggested a trip, I jumped at the offer. I had no idea just how much of a contrast it would turn out to be and having seen it I now have an idea of what China could be. But I doubt it ever will.

An unbiased history of that fair isle is hard to find at least via the internet. Most of those writing of it seem intent on making as strong a case as possible that Taiwan has stood alone across the millennia with no tangible relationship to China itself, much the same case that is made for Tibet. But some historical truths can be gleaned from amid the competing agendas. Taiwan was first peopled by seafarers from south Asia, perhaps 10,000 years ago. The linguistic and genetic stock that remains there today among the aboriginal people is identical to that found as far afield as Hawaii and Easter Island and genetic testing has confirmed that all of Polynesia was populated by those that set sail from Taiwan, 6-8000 years ago. The customs, pottery and motifs of the true native population look much like those that you would find on any Pacific island and in central Mexico for that matter. And like those distant cousins, the aboriginal lifestyle on Taiwan is quickly disappearing.

The Portuguese first brought Taiwan to the attention of the west when they made a log note listing it as “Ilha Formosa” or “beautiful island” while sailing past it in 1544 on their way to Japan. That appellation was the first record of the name that Taiwan would carry into the modern age. The Dutch made a serious attempt at colonization in the 1600’s with the intention of building ports for trade with the mainland and Japan. In the 1640’s they ran off the Spanish who had similar designs and had slowly been adding their own forts for the previous 10 years. In addition to trade, they employed the local population in cultivating sugar cane and harvesting the apparently abundant deer population whose pelts were highly valued by Japanese Samurai for use in their armor. Dutch rule came to an end when a naval force under the Chinese general (or some say pirate) Koxinga landed while in flight from the Manchu who were in the process of dismembering the Ming Dynasty. He hoped to use the island as a mean to re-establish the defeated Ming but it came to naught and he died without achieving his aim. His grandson Zheng Keshuang surrendered control of the island to the newly formed Qing Dynasty in 1683 and although the Qing emperors viewed Taiwan as “little more than a ball of mud beyond civilization”, they oversaw a large influx of Han Chinese from the southern provinces, particularly Fujian. Japan and the Qing went back and forth over it during the 1800’s with Japan trying and failing to invade and the Qing alternately claiming and denying ownership. It remained a mostly ignored remote province until 1895 when it was deeded in perpetuity to Japan following the conclusion of the first Sino-Japanese War. Japan oversaw a modernization of the island with the construction of extensive road works, train lines and buildings. Naturally they also tried to make the population Japanese through forced name-changing and language instruction and this in turn led to a constant series of uprisings and rebellions. Despite the harshness of their governance, it seems a lot of their organizational influence remains today at least compared to the mainland which was in relative chaos during the same period as the warlords and Communists struggled for control. The Japanese remained until their defeat by the Allies in 1945 when the island was returned to the current government in residence – the Nationalist Koumintang led by Chiang Kai-shek. There was considerable dislike by the Taiwanese for the new rulers which led to further uprisings, massacres and martial law. However it all became moot in 1949 when 2,000,000 Nationalists fled the mainland in the face of the victorious Chinese Communists and established the Republic of China. Taiwan was recognized as the “legitimate China” by the United Nations until 1971 when the People’s Republic took over the seat that had been held since 1949.

The first thing that greeted me when I landed was the biggest, cleanest, emptiest airport I’d ever been in. Up to this point, Seoul’s Incheon airport has set the example of what an airport should be; Taiwan’s Tao Yuan took my expectations up another notch. The marble clad corridors were wide and spacious and cool, dimly lit and devoid of people. Immigration had endless open gates, run by friendly young people with perfect, California English. I had a brief chat with the young woman handling my visa about how to say “zero” in common English conversation. She asked me if I had been on flight “one – oh – five” and I said “yes, one – zero – five.” She picked up on that and I explained that “oh” works just fine, but “zero” is a far better way to go when there is any chance of confusion. She smiled, stamped my passport and sent me on my way.

We elected to take the bus into town since it went straight to our hotel. For the equivalent of $3 we were promised a nice upper deck ride in a cool clean bus. We went outside to wait and the second greeting hit me like a shovel in the face – I was in the tropics in a way I had never been in them before. Mexico his hot, Shanghai is hotter and I don’t dare imagine how hot the Philippines are if they are hotter than this. I can’t think of a more oppressive weather moment in my entire traveling life than the one when I stepped out of that glorious monument of an airport terminal and into the outside air. I had to wipe off my sunglasses.

But the bus came and we were on our way. The expressway into Taipei, the capital and about an hour down the road was wide and newly surfaced. The comparisons to the “real China” were starting already - the roads were safe and made sense, there was no trash, no one was driving like crazy-men, there was no constant blowing of horns as cars weaved across three lanes, and most of all there were not too many cars for the space available. Overhead was a bright blue sky with wispy traces of clean, white clouds. Bordering the roads were emerald green rice paddies, choked with flocks of gleaming white egrets and herons. I guess because they hadn’t all been eaten. The scenery really did evoke Japan, at least the southern prefectures that I had visited. While many of the buildings in the outlying reaches of Taipei were old and shoddy, they didn’t have that same moldy shopworn nature that I have come to expect from that same period architecture in Dalian. I sat there mildly stupefied that the place was that different, all of that in only an hour’s worth of visit.

Once in town the thing it was obvious that cars are just not so common. It was rush hour and there was traffic, but it was composed of hordes of motor scooters. I don’t think we waited for more than a single green light at any intersection. The sun was going down and the light was beautiful as we drove down long boulevards under a canopy of palms and banyans, wispy fronds dangling down and brushing the top of the bus. Off in the distance I caught sight of Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world if you can call its rival, that thing in Dubai a “building.” It looked quite impressive yet so out of place given that it had no neighbors that competed with it for miles in every direction. We passed through a construction zone that appeared to be for a new train or subway tunnel judging from the giant boring machine that sat being serviced at street level. The traffic just flowed, in Dalian we would have been stuck for hours; such is the subtle difference in planning mentality between the two places.

The Grand Hyatt is in a beautiful treed district that surrounds Taipei City Hall. We checked in and agreed to meet in an hour. Having nothing better to do I decided to go for a walk and headed back out into the still oppressive heat and humidity. I had no plan so I took a right and walked two blocks and took another right and walked another ¾ of block and stopped and looked up. I found myself at the very foot of that amazing skyscraper I’d seen from afar just minutes ago. It’s one of those buildings that makes you feel like you’re going to fall over backwards when you stand at the base and look up. Done in an interesting “pagoda style” and clad in bright blue with modernized Ming Dynasty details, it was certainly like no building I had ever seen before.

Despite being second in overall height, it currently reigns as the tallest structurally, at roof level and in terms of occupied floor. It stands at 1660 feet tall to the top of its spire, a mere 1469 feet to the roof and 1437 feet to the observation deck on the 101st floor. It has 61 elevators including two that are the fastest in the world traveling at 3313 feet per minute (38 miles per hour). They will bring you from Basement 1 to the 89th floor observatory in 39 seconds.

I wandered around trying to avoid falling over and took a few photos. Every angle was photogenic. I was surprised to find a rendition of Robert Indiana’s famous “LOVE” sculpture that I had not seen in many years. Tired of having a crick in my neck, I continued on, turned the corner and realized that the side entrance of my hotel was directly across the street from where I had ended up. I was starting to get my bearings.

There's a tear in the space-time continuum and pan-dimensional beings are leaking through

2010-08-24T11:28:00.002-06:00

Today marks the 26th time I have left my home at 4:30AM embarking on the Route to the Orient. Over the course of all these trips I have seen many odd and wonderful things and experienced the absolute highs and lows of international travel. I’m not speaking of my experiences with cultures and sights and food, no, I’m only talking about what happens in that 7000 mile hermetically sealed tunnel that extends from my gravelly driveway in the Rio Grande Valley to the marble clad lobby of my apartment building in Dalian, China. The quilt of my memories is sewn with tales of delays, security, immigration, lounges, weather, and lost luggage. It extends from the depths of spending countless hours trapped with uncommunicative co-workers to the apex of seeing a snow clad Mt. Fuji on an obscenely clear day from a business class window. But mostly, it’s about my fellow travelers. And today has been especially rich.

I started my trip as I always do – a fast shower followed by an even faster breakfast of yogurt, sausage, juice and prescription meds. Teddy the Dog wandered in and always looked at us as though we’re confused. On these days he doesn’t venture off his bed in our room until it is completely clear that we’re up and serious about being so. We all know that the animals we live with have their little internal clocks, set tightly to the feeding schedule. I can only guess what’s rattling through his brain when we’re scurrying about a full 2 hours before his breakfast.

The drive to town is always the same this time of day - a few night owls or early birds leaving or heading to some job with absurd working hours. It’s always fast and rarely presents even the tiniest distraction outside perhaps of a bored Bernalillo County Sheriff sitting in a driveway waiting for someone to break the ridiculously low speed limit on that street. Today, no sheriffs and no traffic and no tour buses disgorging hordes of tourists at the airport - the roads were empty and my check-in was fast. I always keep a running tab on my time and as I left the baggage check gates I was standing at a mere 25 minutes since leaving home.

It was all going to plan until I hit security. The boarding pass check was fast and friendly – there was no line and there were four agents sitting there with nothing to do. I picked the guy on the far right and had a nice 30 second conversation with him about how terrible and humanizing it is to have to get up and be somewhere by 5AM. While we were chatting I noticed the first of today’s interesting subjects standing towards the back of the security area rummaging through her bag, no doubt looking for identification. We’re going to call her “Homeless Annie Hall” because she was dressed in a very rumpled version of the look epitomized by Diane Keaton in that movie of so long ago. Probably in my age bracket, she must have had on 5 or 6 dresses of various lengths and patterns creating a disconcerting system of overlapping and cascading layers. I wondered if wearing all your vacation clothes was a faster way to travel – no waiting for bags on the carousel and no chance of losing them on route. Black porkpie hat up top, a gray shawl that had undoubtedly done some time as an afghan on the back of a settee and a man’s maroon necktie out front, she completed this sartorial sundae with a pair of black leather clogs and gray athletic socks pulled up tight. She had a small backpack over one shoulder and a plastic shopping bag from Hudson’s Department store over the opposite arm. Stunned, I said adieu to the agent and headed for the conveyors.
The security gates were also devoid of people so banking on my luck I chose the far right option again, not so much because of position but because the full body scanner was closed; they are just too slow. The first sign of trouble came when the agent on the far side of the metal detector jammed his palm into my chest and told me to stay where I was until my bag went into the x-ray machine. No problem there, it wasn’t going in because the belt wasn’t moving and I wouldn’t have thought much about it had he not been so fierce. I stood and waited until it began to move but just as I stepped forward, it stopped. He repeated himself as if I had forgotten the instructions in the last 30 seconds. I went over and gave it a shove at his suggestion, but now the belt was moving backwards. I pointed that out but he was not interested – he had his script and he was sticking to it. I stepped back in front of the detector only to be verbally attacked by an extremely officious woman who demanded to know what the holdup was. I explained the problem with my bag and she pushed me out of the way and went through. Finally the belt started up and I went though, glad for once that my watch had not set off the alarm. I can only imagine what that nasty guy would have done to me in that case.

The source of my bag’s seesaw trip quickly became apparent – my other bag was not to the liking of the x-ray viewer. I went through the accusatory “Is this YOUR bag?” phase with his assistant and then I was led off to one of the stainless steel tables for further interrogation. This guy removed every single electronic device and placed them in a tray, bringing back a similar experience in Japan where that agent had dug and dug and finally asked me just how many things I had. “Enough to stay entertained” was my answer that day. He swabbed the bag and checked for explosives and gratefully I passed that test too.

My bag and my tray full of iDevices was taking back to the x-ray for a repeat check. Again they didn’t like something, both guys stood there with their noses pressed to the screen, stabbing at something with their fingers and quietly discussing the threat. My guy brought everything over and led me to another table where he handed it all back to me. It turned out to be my backup battery, a little 4”x3” black blob that they didn’t like at all. Funny thing, I normally keep that buried in my roll around suitcase but last night for reasons unclear, I had chosen to put it in my shoulder bag. The smallest things can clearly disrupt the flow of energy in our universe. The agent offered to help me re-pack, something I found amusing when I visualized the two of us trying to put everything back in its place. I thanked him and went off to find the gate.

I settled into a seat and stared at the ceiling. Homeless Annie Hall came over and sat down just behind me and went back to rummaging through her plastic shopping bag. She must have found what she was looking for because she stopped and then fell asleep. Behind me, a family of three was waiting for one of the planes leaving from that end of the terminal. Dad was talking to Junior about how one’s ribs attach to one’s muscles. Junior was making loud fart noises with his mouth and Mom was speaking in some sort of Creole English with a tinge of Star Wars patois. She sat slouched in her chair with a bright yellow cloth shoulder bag flopped over her head. Dad took Junior and went off to find something to eat.

The Officious Woman from the security check showed up a few minutes later and sat down across from me. She was traveling with a friend and the two of them were clearly in foul moods. Friend of Officious Woman didn’t want to sit next to me and she didn’t want to sit next to Officious Woman so she tried a seat one down from mine. The woman next to that seat told he it was taken so she went around behind me and tried to sit with Creole Mom who gave her the same story. She eventually settled five rows to back. Officious Woman got on the phone and spent 15 minutes complaining to her husband (?) Marty, about how she’d been rerouted and wasn’t going to get home to South Bend until 4:30. She was especially aggrieved by the fact that her friend had been given an aisle seat while at check-in while she was told that she had to wait until the departure gate. Given the nature of her travails, I now understood why she had been in such a hurry to push me out of the way back at security.

Turning my attention away from her, I spotted Middle-aged Businessman approaching from the right. Yellow button-down short sleeved shirt, blue knee length Bermuda shorts, sandals and white socks pulled up to his knees. He was a neat and crisp version of a stylist’s nightmare, another person in my age bracket who made me wonder how I turned out like I did when so many of my peers turn out like he did. I guess I’ll thank My Lovely Wife next time I see her.

It was getting close to boarding time and I decided to commit the ultimate Rookie Mistake of going to the Boy’s Room just before boarding. I say Rookie Mistake because this leg of my trip is on the Barbie Jet and if you happen to be lucky enough to get a 1st class upgrade, you have to be at the head of the line because the Barbie Jet lacks adequate overhead storage in the 1st class cabin. It’s known as the Barbie Jet for a reason - it’s about the same size as the toy plane that every 8 year old girl hopes to find under the tree on Christmas morning. It’s that small, and is barely adequate for jetting Barbie, Skipper and Ken off to Jamaica for a week at Hedonism III.

I got back from my diversion and found myself several people back in line. Of course it was hard to tell if there was a line because each person forming said line had about 8 feet in between them. It was more of a “loose social gathering” than an actual line. I scooted between two guys and asked the leading one if he was waiting for early boarding. He confirmed that he was so I stood there with him. The guy behind him didn’t say anything so I stayed where I was. When they opened the velvet rope it was clear that I had cut that second guy off and I considered apologizing but chose instead to just head down the jet way.

I found a place for my bag in the bin above the seat one row up and across the aisle. I love to sit there and watch my fellow passengers board. First of all you can see the envy in their eyes and secondly they’re an interesting bunch. First class filled up with an older guy in front of me and man and woman across the aisle. The guy I had talked to outside had the window one row up and across and my next subject of the day took the remaining seat. We’re going to call him “Bird Boy” not only because of his angular features, but because his motions and behavior strongly evoked one of those glass birds half filled with water that amazed us all as children. That bird would stand on the edge of a glass and pretend to drink, endless bobbing and waiting as the fluid inside its body would redistribute itself. Bird Boy this morning had the most deliberate motions of any person I have ever seen, from the 10 minutes it took him to properly place his small backpack in the overhead bin to the intent examination he performed on both halves of his seatbelt. To say that he was focused would be a generous understatement. He finally got buckled in only to be told that his computer also had to go up top which entailed another 5 minutes of examining the bin for precisely the correct placement opportunity.

One last interesting passenger boarded in classic New Jersey gangster attire – sport coat, blue shirt unbuttoned to the navel, gold chains, a hairy chest and ample pompadour. He was carrying a blue canvas book bag and was truly offended when he discovered that there were no hangers available for his coat. “First Class only” from the flight attendant sent him on his way.

We took off on time and rose up above the clouds, the year’s smallest full moon riding the western horizon. I drank an orange juice and watched Bird Boy as he tried to fathom his snack box. Apparently it provided too many choices because he would reach forward, touch something and then quickly snap his hand back as though he’d put it in a fire. He finally decided on the bag of bagel chips and from then on, the choices came faster and easier. I dozed off.

Not a bad haul from a people watching standpoint given the small amount of time doing so. Probably one of my best days ever; honestly I had my doubts that the total of these cases could be topped. But sitting in the lounge a few hours later the Crowning Event occurred – Santa Claus made a late August appearance.

He was a jolly old elf sporting an ample belly. Shoulder length white ringlets crowned his head and a long white beard framed his ruddy face. He was wearing black Dockers and a bright red Hawaiian shirt festooned with big white camellias. Completing the outfit – a bright red pair of red patent leather Reebok walkers. I sat and stared and wondered who else it could be. I also wondered why the heck Mrs. Claus let him out of the house looking like that. Deciding that there was no answer, I watched him walk by and turned my thoughts elsewhere.