tbaroundtheworld

Ending a trip with a loved one is very tough, and it's even harder when you have to put them on a plane and in turn, get on a plane yourself to somewhere else. Outside of long distance romances, vacations generally end with a pile of dirty laundry and a stack of mail to sort. When you meet someone in a foreign land, spend a week roaming around and then head in separate directions, the finality of it hits home harder. Gwynn and I caught a cab and spent an hour in the Beijing rush hour traffic arriving at the airport with plenty of time. I snuck her through the status line, this time without any question about her carry-on and backpack (the agent noting on her boarding pass that the backpack was “not full”) and we went downstairs to Starbucks where I tried to prove once again to another skeptic that it had table service. When Aidan and I were there in March, I'd been proved a liar and this time would be no different; while a gal in an apron did show up just as we were finishing, ...

My daughter Aidan’s trip back in March was constrained by real-world responsibilities. Not so much my work – no one seems to care if I’m around these days – but rather by her graduate school schedule. There was an extra day in the mix but we agreed that it was probably in her best interest to have a day back in the US before going back to school. And on our last day, she and I of course woke up to the biggest orange sandstorm of the year and so our time was even further reduced. Gwynn did not have this problem, her school year was over and so the constraint fell more to my schedule. But, we were able to take one extra day, and that day was dedicated to the zoo. Both of my kids are “zoo people” and I’ll admit that I am one too. While I think that they are certainly not the best thing I the world for the animals, they are what they are and not going to them isn’t going to make them go away. Rather I think our patronage allows the zoo management to make the best of the fact of their exist...

We had a couple of days left on this grand tour and we planned to make the most of them. Problem was the Beijing weather had a different idea. It’s an odd thing here to have days of crystal blue skies but we somehow were allowed one after another. And the price of that clarity was a hot Beifang (literally place in the north part of China) sun beating down on our heads. My driver Jiang and I often talk about the weather and specifically how it is up here in the north. While we in the west hear about the sandstorms in the country’s capital, for whatever reason we’re inclined to think of them as aberrations. Jiang though has told me repeatedly that Beijing sits in a desert and what you hear about is consistent with how it should be. Back in March when my daughter Aidan and I got caught in the worst sandstorm of the year it was reported as an unusual event. Months afterwards I read in the local news that it had nothing to do with the fact that the Gobi is slowly creeping across the north o...

I don’t think I will ever tire of visiting the Terracotta Warriors - they are such an inspiring sight and each time standing before them promises new discoveries. Our second day began with the intrepid Lily and her amazing wealth of knowledge about the region and its history. This time she and I had a long discussion about the cave houses common to this region. I told her that I’d actually seen some still in use during my visit to Datong last week. She said she was surprised as here in Shaanxi they are most relegated to use as storerooms or pig sties. I didn’t quite get the significance of the latter but also didn’t ask. I suppose the pigs with their sensitive skin and acute intelligence would appreciate having a home out of the sun and sporting a year-around temperature of 65 degrees. We also talked about why the home province to Xi’an – Shaanxi – has two A’s while its eastern neighbor – Shanxi – has only one. The answer didn’t go beyond the explanation for the single A version which ...

Ah Xi’an, Pearl of the Orient! Well, that sobriquet is perhaps better applied to Shanghai or Hong Kong, but for me Xi’an will always be my pearl. It’s the ideal city in my book, home to a modest 8 million inhabitants and the center of the earliest civilized culture in China. As a history lover, Xi’an is like a theme park, with one grand attraction after another. And even though this was my third visit in 7 months, I could go three more times in the next 7 and be perfectly happy. Between the peaceful splendor of the Little Wild Goose Pagoda and the staggering majesty of the Terracotta Warriors, Xi’an has everything I like. We arrived and were retrieved by the intrepid guide Lily – no haggling with thieving Shaanxi cab drivers this time. I planned it this way because Lily had been bugging me to visit the Hanyangling Museum which is conveniently located on the airport road into town. On my previous visits I’d always been on the far side of the county so a visit was difficult. This time we...

We’d arranged a driver to take us out to the Great Wall and we went downstairs a few minutes early to see if he was there. I saw a Chinese man with one of those goofy Bluetooth earpieces and thought for a moment that it might be him but he made no sign of knowing us so we went outside to wait. The pickup time was set for 9:00 and at 8:45 my kid Gwynn asked me if that was my phone ringing in my messenger bag. It was, and when I answered it a Chinese person began talking and I got flummoxed and told him that he had the wrong number. While I can generally get things done face to face, phone conversations with strangers remain beyond my ken. I hung up and went back to waiting. Thirty seconds later it rang again and this time it was someone speaking a mixture of English and Chinese. I tried again and they told me to speak English which I did. The man on the line told me that my driver was here waiting in the lobby. I told him we were standing outside. Gwynn told me to turn around and there,...

My kid’s plane was due to arrive at 2:50 so after a double breakfast (I do this when traveling in order to skip lunch) I went out to wander the streets. I had no plan so the moment I cleared the hotel entrance I found an empty bench in the shade and sat down. There were plenty of options but none terribly appealing as it was hotter than Hades despite being only 8:30. The sun, an unusual sight here in Beijing, was beating down on my head with an intense fury making me wish I had a ball cap. Even if it painted me as a western tourist dweeb. Lots of young women in China wear them, tucking their pony tail through the hole in the back but the only men you see are either chain smoking tattooed Eurotrash in cargo shantz or American frat boy lacrosse players here for a demonstration match. I didn’t fit either bill so I filed that thought while I sat there looking up and down the 3rd Ring Road. One choice was to go and find Panjianyuan, the giant outdoor antiquities market. I’d been told about ...