A few weekends ago my Sacred Texts class accompanied the Buddhist class to a Buddhist retreat house. The monk who ran the house was a successful in business and then decided to trade that in to become a monk. With his money from business he bought the side of a mountain and built a retreat house that not many people know about. Our teacher is friends with the monk so we were allowed to go for a visit. During the visit the monk taught us different styles of meditation and we got to see how his style of living. The place was beautiful because it was so peaceful and quite. We were on the retreat for about two hours total.
The next set of pictures are from Drink ball, a game that I had never heard of until just the other day. The object of the games is to throw a ping pong ball at your opponents’ bottle. Once the ball hits the bottle your teammate has to drink your beer as quick as he can until the opposing team finds the ball and hits the table with it. You alternate throwing and teams until the first team finished their beer. As you can imagine this got really intense and slippery because 4 bottles fell and broke. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.
The last two pictures are from this past Friday night when we went to the Armin Van Buuren rave at the GT Banana. Armin is apparently one of the top 5 djs in the world and the GT Banana had a ton of people there to prove it. In preparation for this event we decided to go to the store and buy some rave outfits. Unfortunately these are only pictures of our outfits and not of the rave itself. There is a link to a video on Youtube than can explain it better.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/FallSemester08?authkey=JlGuPpPdzgM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg400XV06m0
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Guilin
Guanxi Province is home to Guilin and is in southern China. This province boarders Vietnam and is where New Orleans or Texas would be in the states. Guilin is a touristy place because of its famous rice terraced fields and outdoor activities. We spent a week there from Oct. 27th to Nov 2nd.
We left of Guilin on a 22hr train ride that was really relaxing and didn’t seem that long at all. (I guess I am used to an overnight train thing by now). Once we arrived in Guilin we took a bus straight to Yao Hill. There we took a cable-car up and decended by tabaggon. The view was amazing from the top and we got a first glimpse of what the limestone formations looked liked. That night for dinner we went to Zhengyang Street and got some seafood for dinner. At the restaurant we were given an English menu and ordered dinner from that, but a couple of beers later we decided to order more food and were given a Chinese menu with the same food for less money. We argued in Chinese and made the waitress change all of the prices on our bill because they were trying to rip us off.
The next day we checked out of the hotel and took a 2hr bus ride to Yanshou another town in the province. There we got on a cruse of Li River which was another spectacular sight. One of the scenic points we floated by is on the back of the 20kuai bill. We took a bamboo boat and the cruse lasted for two hours. After that we got some dinner and went to a water show that was produced and directed by the guy that choreographed the Olympics opening ceremony. I initially thought it was going to be fireworks and lights, but instead it was more of a play with over 600 performers on the water. The highlight was the finally in which hundreds of girls dressed in outfits that lit up and did a light show to music. ( I have a video of it in the link).
Day three and four we had the option to pick between three options. Either we could: A) Bike to Moon Hill and Water Cave, B) Hike the countryside and Kayak, or C) Cook and Raft down the Yulong River. We decided to choose options A&C. First we did Cooking and Rafting, which was a blast. In our cooking class we were taught how to make dumplings, kung pao chicken, beer fish, and traditional noodles. (Don’t worry I have the recipe). The kitchen that we cooked at was our guides’ outside terrace. He had been a cook for many years and decided to switch professions, so he turned his house into a cooking classroom. From there we got back on the bus and went to the river. This was one of the highlights for me on the trip because it was nonstop laughing the whole time. We were allowed two to a raft and got water guns and had an all out war on the river. We threw everything from seaweed to mud to water at each other and had a beer to cap it off.
The next day was option A, Biking to Moon hill and the Mud Cave. I decided to rent a scooter that went about 50km/hr instead of biking because I have a bike here at school and I haven’t been on a scooter yet. So we biked about an hour and a half to lunch and climbed a ton of stair to moon hill while our food was cooking. But on the way up we ran into women selling water who decided up follow us up in case we wanted to buy water at the top. These women were easily in there 50’s and were local farmers that sell water one day a week. They followed us all the way up a gigantic hill or small mountain, I can’t decide, with a case of water on a strap. This hike up easily took a good 20min and was all stairs. The funny part about it was that these women beat a majority of our group up the hill/mountain.
From lunch we ended up riding about 15mins to the caves, and got into the proper attire for the mud. We explored the caves for what seemed like an hour and topped it off by crawling through this little hole was I could barley fit in. From there we descended into the cave further and submerged into the mud. The mud was so thick that it felt like I was walking though knee deep seaweed when it was just really thick mud. We got in a couple of mud fights and floated around for a while before we cleaned off and rode back to the hotel.
The next day we had to get a night bag ready because we were going up into the mountains to stay at this small village and meet kids at the schools there. We took a 4hr drive to Longsheng County and then had to switch to a smaller bus halfway through because our bus was too big to get on the road. There we even times on the road when our bus was about 6inches from the edge, a little scary. We finally got to the village and took a two hour hike to what felt like the shire from lord of the rings. At the school we met the kids and played with them for about an hour or so. We gave them the gifts that we had brought and talked to some of the parents and teachers. One kid brought a soccer ball and the kids had a blast kicking it around and trying to play basketball. After about an hour the kids had to head home because it was Friday and some of them live two hours walk away. So we said our good-bye’s and were about to leave when we saw this little boy with his arms full of toys not smiling. You could see he was visibly upset for whatever reason and he was just standing there staring at the ground. I went over there to see if I could cheer him up, but nothing I did managed to make him even crack a smile. One of our tour guides come over to help translate and told me that the boy was probably overwhelmed because we are so foreign. She said that it was a lot for him to take in at one and that we look like aliens to him. But to me when I was squatting there trying to cheer him up, for a second I felt like I understood all the problems in the world looking at this boy. It was as if he was trying to tell me all the problems facing Chinese culture with westernization. (corny, I know, but hang in there) Nothing I seemed to do would work and it was time to go, so I had to leave him there staring at the ground upset. But I feel like I got a better understanding of what westernization really means to the cultural identity of China or any other nation going through the same process.
As soon as I left the boy I ran into this older man who was about up to my shoulder, and smoking a cigarette with a wooden cane and some raggedy clothes. I walked down the steps and we made eye contact so I went over to him and asked him his name. With a big smile he told me a name that started with a P, Ping maybe, I couldn’t really understand him. I then told him my name, and he quickly help up three fingers to tell me that he was 83. The difference between this old mad the little boy made me think about the way china perceives westerners and particularly Americans. How the culture is changing and way different generations embrace change while other disregard it. The amazing thing about this man is that he has seen it all in China. He has lived through the great famine, Mao, Japanese acquisition, a world war, and most recently the Olympics. I wish I could have talked to him more.
After our excursion to this little school town we walked back to our other little building cluster and got some dinner. There we were swarmed by these women know for their extremely long hair, that wanted to sell us scarves. I bought an orange one. Later that night we went to a barn fire at the school in our building cluster, and got to see the kid’s classrooms. It was kind of disheartening because I couldn’t really read the little boys fourth grade Chinese text, but I new what they were talking about. We also got to see the women with the really long hair take out their weave and their hair almost touched the ground. They sang us a traditional song while we watched them comb their hair.
After that we hit the sack and woke up the next morning to find out that our trip to the rice terraces was cancelled due to rain. I was kind of upset, but rationalized it because I got to go on that amazing walk the day before. At around 11am we walked back to the small bus that took us to the large bus and drove back into town. We got some lunch at a restaurant that sold more dog and horse meat that anything else and went to our final stop. We took the bus from this town area up another mountain to this hop spring resort. The only difficult thing was that this road was unpaved and we had had a ton of rain all day and night, so the conditions were bad to say the least. After a gut-wrenching 3 hour bus ride we made it to the hotel. The first thing we did was go to the hot spring that had about 7 or 8 different Jacuzzis. They even had a special Jacuzzi that had fish that would eat the dead skin off your body for 80 kuai, I didn’t go in that one. Although I did go in the herbal medicine one that had huge tea bags floating in it at about 100 degrees. We hopped around from Jacuzzi to Jacuzzi for about an hour and topped it off with a dive in the cooler pool and went back to take a shower and nap. We ate dinner that night in the hotel itself and took it easy. The next morning we packed our stuff up and got back on the bus for another treacherous ride. This time I wised up and sat on the side furthest from the cliff so I couldn’t see how close we were to the side, and ps it had been raining all night long again so the roads were even worse. We ended up getting to the airport in just a couple of hours and back to our campus in Beijing no later than 4:30pm.
All in all I had a great trip that was quite different from the Silk Road trip. I found this trip to be more enjoyable because we didn’t go see a bunch of museums and got to see the nature the China has to offer. Activities like cooking and biking defiantly made the trip worth it and more memorable. I also got a feeling for the differences between northern china and southern china, besides the obvious accents and food. There is more of a sense of “untouched” china, meaning that the people are just beginning to get the sense of westernization. I got to see what I have read about all semester, that the development is concentrated on the costal cities, while the rest of china is trying to catch up. This is a problem that China is going to have to fix or the disparity of income and social classes is going to expand even more and hurt the country further.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/MudDiving?authkey=-TJskvPFMyw
We left of Guilin on a 22hr train ride that was really relaxing and didn’t seem that long at all. (I guess I am used to an overnight train thing by now). Once we arrived in Guilin we took a bus straight to Yao Hill. There we took a cable-car up and decended by tabaggon. The view was amazing from the top and we got a first glimpse of what the limestone formations looked liked. That night for dinner we went to Zhengyang Street and got some seafood for dinner. At the restaurant we were given an English menu and ordered dinner from that, but a couple of beers later we decided to order more food and were given a Chinese menu with the same food for less money. We argued in Chinese and made the waitress change all of the prices on our bill because they were trying to rip us off.
The next day we checked out of the hotel and took a 2hr bus ride to Yanshou another town in the province. There we got on a cruse of Li River which was another spectacular sight. One of the scenic points we floated by is on the back of the 20kuai bill. We took a bamboo boat and the cruse lasted for two hours. After that we got some dinner and went to a water show that was produced and directed by the guy that choreographed the Olympics opening ceremony. I initially thought it was going to be fireworks and lights, but instead it was more of a play with over 600 performers on the water. The highlight was the finally in which hundreds of girls dressed in outfits that lit up and did a light show to music. ( I have a video of it in the link).
Day three and four we had the option to pick between three options. Either we could: A) Bike to Moon Hill and Water Cave, B) Hike the countryside and Kayak, or C) Cook and Raft down the Yulong River. We decided to choose options A&C. First we did Cooking and Rafting, which was a blast. In our cooking class we were taught how to make dumplings, kung pao chicken, beer fish, and traditional noodles. (Don’t worry I have the recipe). The kitchen that we cooked at was our guides’ outside terrace. He had been a cook for many years and decided to switch professions, so he turned his house into a cooking classroom. From there we got back on the bus and went to the river. This was one of the highlights for me on the trip because it was nonstop laughing the whole time. We were allowed two to a raft and got water guns and had an all out war on the river. We threw everything from seaweed to mud to water at each other and had a beer to cap it off.
The next day was option A, Biking to Moon hill and the Mud Cave. I decided to rent a scooter that went about 50km/hr instead of biking because I have a bike here at school and I haven’t been on a scooter yet. So we biked about an hour and a half to lunch and climbed a ton of stair to moon hill while our food was cooking. But on the way up we ran into women selling water who decided up follow us up in case we wanted to buy water at the top. These women were easily in there 50’s and were local farmers that sell water one day a week. They followed us all the way up a gigantic hill or small mountain, I can’t decide, with a case of water on a strap. This hike up easily took a good 20min and was all stairs. The funny part about it was that these women beat a majority of our group up the hill/mountain.
From lunch we ended up riding about 15mins to the caves, and got into the proper attire for the mud. We explored the caves for what seemed like an hour and topped it off by crawling through this little hole was I could barley fit in. From there we descended into the cave further and submerged into the mud. The mud was so thick that it felt like I was walking though knee deep seaweed when it was just really thick mud. We got in a couple of mud fights and floated around for a while before we cleaned off and rode back to the hotel.
The next day we had to get a night bag ready because we were going up into the mountains to stay at this small village and meet kids at the schools there. We took a 4hr drive to Longsheng County and then had to switch to a smaller bus halfway through because our bus was too big to get on the road. There we even times on the road when our bus was about 6inches from the edge, a little scary. We finally got to the village and took a two hour hike to what felt like the shire from lord of the rings. At the school we met the kids and played with them for about an hour or so. We gave them the gifts that we had brought and talked to some of the parents and teachers. One kid brought a soccer ball and the kids had a blast kicking it around and trying to play basketball. After about an hour the kids had to head home because it was Friday and some of them live two hours walk away. So we said our good-bye’s and were about to leave when we saw this little boy with his arms full of toys not smiling. You could see he was visibly upset for whatever reason and he was just standing there staring at the ground. I went over there to see if I could cheer him up, but nothing I did managed to make him even crack a smile. One of our tour guides come over to help translate and told me that the boy was probably overwhelmed because we are so foreign. She said that it was a lot for him to take in at one and that we look like aliens to him. But to me when I was squatting there trying to cheer him up, for a second I felt like I understood all the problems in the world looking at this boy. It was as if he was trying to tell me all the problems facing Chinese culture with westernization. (corny, I know, but hang in there) Nothing I seemed to do would work and it was time to go, so I had to leave him there staring at the ground upset. But I feel like I got a better understanding of what westernization really means to the cultural identity of China or any other nation going through the same process.
As soon as I left the boy I ran into this older man who was about up to my shoulder, and smoking a cigarette with a wooden cane and some raggedy clothes. I walked down the steps and we made eye contact so I went over to him and asked him his name. With a big smile he told me a name that started with a P, Ping maybe, I couldn’t really understand him. I then told him my name, and he quickly help up three fingers to tell me that he was 83. The difference between this old mad the little boy made me think about the way china perceives westerners and particularly Americans. How the culture is changing and way different generations embrace change while other disregard it. The amazing thing about this man is that he has seen it all in China. He has lived through the great famine, Mao, Japanese acquisition, a world war, and most recently the Olympics. I wish I could have talked to him more.
After our excursion to this little school town we walked back to our other little building cluster and got some dinner. There we were swarmed by these women know for their extremely long hair, that wanted to sell us scarves. I bought an orange one. Later that night we went to a barn fire at the school in our building cluster, and got to see the kid’s classrooms. It was kind of disheartening because I couldn’t really read the little boys fourth grade Chinese text, but I new what they were talking about. We also got to see the women with the really long hair take out their weave and their hair almost touched the ground. They sang us a traditional song while we watched them comb their hair.
After that we hit the sack and woke up the next morning to find out that our trip to the rice terraces was cancelled due to rain. I was kind of upset, but rationalized it because I got to go on that amazing walk the day before. At around 11am we walked back to the small bus that took us to the large bus and drove back into town. We got some lunch at a restaurant that sold more dog and horse meat that anything else and went to our final stop. We took the bus from this town area up another mountain to this hop spring resort. The only difficult thing was that this road was unpaved and we had had a ton of rain all day and night, so the conditions were bad to say the least. After a gut-wrenching 3 hour bus ride we made it to the hotel. The first thing we did was go to the hot spring that had about 7 or 8 different Jacuzzis. They even had a special Jacuzzi that had fish that would eat the dead skin off your body for 80 kuai, I didn’t go in that one. Although I did go in the herbal medicine one that had huge tea bags floating in it at about 100 degrees. We hopped around from Jacuzzi to Jacuzzi for about an hour and topped it off with a dive in the cooler pool and went back to take a shower and nap. We ate dinner that night in the hotel itself and took it easy. The next morning we packed our stuff up and got back on the bus for another treacherous ride. This time I wised up and sat on the side furthest from the cliff so I couldn’t see how close we were to the side, and ps it had been raining all night long again so the roads were even worse. We ended up getting to the airport in just a couple of hours and back to our campus in Beijing no later than 4:30pm.
All in all I had a great trip that was quite different from the Silk Road trip. I found this trip to be more enjoyable because we didn’t go see a bunch of museums and got to see the nature the China has to offer. Activities like cooking and biking defiantly made the trip worth it and more memorable. I also got a feeling for the differences between northern china and southern china, besides the obvious accents and food. There is more of a sense of “untouched” china, meaning that the people are just beginning to get the sense of westernization. I got to see what I have read about all semester, that the development is concentrated on the costal cities, while the rest of china is trying to catch up. This is a problem that China is going to have to fix or the disparity of income and social classes is going to expand even more and hurt the country further.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/MudDiving?authkey=-TJskvPFMyw
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Two Rules in Doing Business in China
Rule 1: Everything is possible
Rule 2: Nothing is easy
When you are optimistic, see rule 2
When you are discouraged, see rule 1
This was one of the slides today in my Chinese Economics class. It is initally really funny because if you spend anytime in China at all you know how true this is. Everything and anything is possible, however getting there is always more than a challange. But my teacher used this to illistrate the point that the chinese always like to keep things in the gray area. You never know what is exactly going to happen and how its going to get done, but it always ends up finished one way or another. A perfect example of this is the train ticket situation. A passanger is not allowed to buy a return ticket until they reach their initial destiniation. Nothing here is black and white, just gray. Thats my lesson for the day...
Rule 2: Nothing is easy
When you are optimistic, see rule 2
When you are discouraged, see rule 1
This was one of the slides today in my Chinese Economics class. It is initally really funny because if you spend anytime in China at all you know how true this is. Everything and anything is possible, however getting there is always more than a challange. But my teacher used this to illistrate the point that the chinese always like to keep things in the gray area. You never know what is exactly going to happen and how its going to get done, but it always ends up finished one way or another. A perfect example of this is the train ticket situation. A passanger is not allowed to buy a return ticket until they reach their initial destiniation. Nothing here is black and white, just gray. Thats my lesson for the day...
Friday, October 17, 2008
Past Couple of Days
I added some miscellaneous pictures that I have taken over the past couple of days. Since it is the ten year anniversary of TBC, there is a big celebration with lots of events that get us out of class. So on Wednesday we decided to take a big ride from our school in the northwest district of Beijing to Tiananmen sq, about a 40min ride. On the way we passed the Lama temple a famous sight in Beijing and ended us at the square. At the square we took ended up on the wrong side of the fence with our bikes so we were asked to get on the other side by cops. Most of us found an exit but Sean didn’t and decided to hop the fence and ended up fracturing the arm right in front of the big picture of Mao at the Forbidden City. After about 10min he decided that he needed to go the hospital and get some help. We hopped in a cab and took him to S.O.S., a western hospital specifically for expats. He got some help and we were out of there in a couple of hours.
The second groups of pictures are from Thursday when I went for the first fitting of my suit. The suit fit really well and the shirt was amazing for only $15 or so dollars. I get to pick it up tomorrow and I might put in a couple of more orders. http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/Misc?authkey=EUM3yJyQQfk
The second groups of pictures are from Thursday when I went for the first fitting of my suit. The suit fit really well and the shirt was amazing for only $15 or so dollars. I get to pick it up tomorrow and I might put in a couple of more orders. http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/Misc?authkey=EUM3yJyQQfk
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Shanghai
Almost two weeks ago during National Holiday I took a trip with Regis, Devon, and Brittney to Shanghai, Hongzhou, and Suzhou. These places are south of Beijing on the east coast about the same latitude of Georgia in the U.S. Shanghai is the financial center of Mainland China and one of the most amazing places in China. Hongzhou is about a two hour bus ride from Shanghai and is the Chinese version of Lake Town. From there we went to Suzhou, a river town that has several streams flowing thru town, and it’s the closest thing China has to Venice. After that we headed back to Shanghai and hopped a flight back to Beijing.
The trip started on Saturday morning when we left Shanghai on a flight from the Capital Airport in Beijing and arrived at Shanghai about two hours later. We jumped in a cab and found out that our Hostels road wasn’t on the map. So after a few phone calls and what seemed like an eternity we finally got a hold of the hostel and got to our room. This hostel was about $10 a night we even got our own bathroom. Our first couple of days in Shanghai we spent mainly at the Bund and Pudong. The Bund is the street across the river from Pudong, and Pudong is the most famous skyline in Mainland China. On our second day we went to the second ball of the observation tower and got to look our over Shanghai. From there we met us with a Chinese friend that we had met during the Olympics and let them show us around for a little bit. We went out to dinner with them and ate some Shanghainese food and tried to speak to them in Chinese. The next day we did more of the same and went to the expat area of Shanghai which was extremely expensive. We ate Thai that night and left for Hongzhou the next day.
Leaving for Hongzhou, and took the lazy way out which turned out to be the hard way. We packed all our things up and got a cab that took us to the bus station in Shanghai. Since this was national holiday and everybody and their mother was traveling we decided to make a deal with the cab driver and have him take us to Hongzhou. He agreed and everything was fine until we actually arrived in Hongzhou, and he didn’t want to take us to our destination. So we refused to pay him the total amount and got into an argument with him over were our drop off point was. He apparently didn’t know the town and didn’t know where our hostel was. We argued for about 15 minutes and started walking away when he finally asked for directions. The guy that gave him directions decided to ride shotgun and we crammed the four of us in the back seat. We finally got to the hostel and spent the rest of the day renting bikes and exploring the town. Our hostel was a decent place that fit eight in a bunk bed style room with the bathroom just downstairs. The next day we woke up early and rode around the whole lake and climbed a huge hill with rocks that overlooked the lake. That night we met up the some of our friends and went out for a few drinks. The next day we did more of the same and relaxed before getting ready to go to Suzhou.
The next morning we left for Suzhou bright and early. We didn’t spend the night because there wasn’t that much to see, so we locked out bags up at the bus stations and expored that town for the day. We took a motorcycle 4-seat cab to one side of town and walked until we came to the place where you could ride the boat down the streams through town. Our boatman wore a rice hat and sang traditional Chinese songs to us as we floated downstream. After the boat ride there wasn’t much else to see so had dinner and got on another bus back to Shanghai. During this short week we had traveled to three different places relatively close to one another and they were in three different provinces. So now I have almost been more provinces in china than I have states in the US.
We ended up getting back to Shaghai late due to traffic and lost our reservation at the hostel. We then had to find another hostel that had openings, this was sort of a blessing because the hostel we moved into was 10x better than the one we lost. This new hostel had a movie room, ping pong table, pool table, roof top bar, and a computer room all for around $16 dollars a night. We spent the next couple of days seeing Pudong and the bund at night and relaxing in the park. The pictures don't do the skyline justice. Shanghai is an amazing place because of its progression espically in the last few years. The Pudong skyline is so new that the tallest building in Asia (completed in 2007) isn't even on the postcards yet. An intresting fact is that China has 25% of the worlds large crains that are used to build Skyscrappers. If you add that with the number in Dubai it equals 75% of the worlds large crains, compared to NYC's total of 3. I think Shanghai illistrates exactly what the rapid growth of China really means and I am intrested how that will translate in the future. http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/Shanghai02?authkey=ykdIdwVbyo4#
The trip started on Saturday morning when we left Shanghai on a flight from the Capital Airport in Beijing and arrived at Shanghai about two hours later. We jumped in a cab and found out that our Hostels road wasn’t on the map. So after a few phone calls and what seemed like an eternity we finally got a hold of the hostel and got to our room. This hostel was about $10 a night we even got our own bathroom. Our first couple of days in Shanghai we spent mainly at the Bund and Pudong. The Bund is the street across the river from Pudong, and Pudong is the most famous skyline in Mainland China. On our second day we went to the second ball of the observation tower and got to look our over Shanghai. From there we met us with a Chinese friend that we had met during the Olympics and let them show us around for a little bit. We went out to dinner with them and ate some Shanghainese food and tried to speak to them in Chinese. The next day we did more of the same and went to the expat area of Shanghai which was extremely expensive. We ate Thai that night and left for Hongzhou the next day.
Leaving for Hongzhou, and took the lazy way out which turned out to be the hard way. We packed all our things up and got a cab that took us to the bus station in Shanghai. Since this was national holiday and everybody and their mother was traveling we decided to make a deal with the cab driver and have him take us to Hongzhou. He agreed and everything was fine until we actually arrived in Hongzhou, and he didn’t want to take us to our destination. So we refused to pay him the total amount and got into an argument with him over were our drop off point was. He apparently didn’t know the town and didn’t know where our hostel was. We argued for about 15 minutes and started walking away when he finally asked for directions. The guy that gave him directions decided to ride shotgun and we crammed the four of us in the back seat. We finally got to the hostel and spent the rest of the day renting bikes and exploring the town. Our hostel was a decent place that fit eight in a bunk bed style room with the bathroom just downstairs. The next day we woke up early and rode around the whole lake and climbed a huge hill with rocks that overlooked the lake. That night we met up the some of our friends and went out for a few drinks. The next day we did more of the same and relaxed before getting ready to go to Suzhou.
The next morning we left for Suzhou bright and early. We didn’t spend the night because there wasn’t that much to see, so we locked out bags up at the bus stations and expored that town for the day. We took a motorcycle 4-seat cab to one side of town and walked until we came to the place where you could ride the boat down the streams through town. Our boatman wore a rice hat and sang traditional Chinese songs to us as we floated downstream. After the boat ride there wasn’t much else to see so had dinner and got on another bus back to Shanghai. During this short week we had traveled to three different places relatively close to one another and they were in three different provinces. So now I have almost been more provinces in china than I have states in the US.
We ended up getting back to Shaghai late due to traffic and lost our reservation at the hostel. We then had to find another hostel that had openings, this was sort of a blessing because the hostel we moved into was 10x better than the one we lost. This new hostel had a movie room, ping pong table, pool table, roof top bar, and a computer room all for around $16 dollars a night. We spent the next couple of days seeing Pudong and the bund at night and relaxing in the park. The pictures don't do the skyline justice. Shanghai is an amazing place because of its progression espically in the last few years. The Pudong skyline is so new that the tallest building in Asia (completed in 2007) isn't even on the postcards yet. An intresting fact is that China has 25% of the worlds large crains that are used to build Skyscrappers. If you add that with the number in Dubai it equals 75% of the worlds large crains, compared to NYC's total of 3. I think Shanghai illistrates exactly what the rapid growth of China really means and I am intrested how that will translate in the future. http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/Shanghai02?authkey=ykdIdwVbyo4#
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Chinese National Holiday
The Chinese National Holiday is traditionally the first week in October. However this year the National Holiday was limited to a day, later to be stretched back into a week in fear of a slowing economy. Fortunately I get to reap the benefits of this week long holiday with a semi-vacation/tour of China. Initially I had planned on traveling to Thailand during this holiday because a week long this is China’s busiest travel holiday next to Chinese New Year. But his plan quickly died because I only have a single entry Visa due to the Olympics and getting a re-entry visa is 太贵了 (very expensive). After some debating on which destination we wanted to see the most in China, we decided on Yunan Province. Yunan is the most south-western province besides Tibet and is home to the Tiger leaping gorge, which is the largest gorge in the world. This was a great plan until we looked up flights and saw that they cost about $450 round-trip, which is out of our budget.
That’s when we landed on plan C, Shanghai. We booked a flight leaving for Shanghai on Sat. Sept. 27th and returning on Fri. Oct. 3rd. I had originally anticipated on going to Shanghai later on during the trip when we have a 5 day weekend, but we are going to swap that with the Yunan trip instead and see if we can catch a cheaper flight. Shanghai is an amazingly westernized place for mainland China. The business district is the Chinese equivalent to Manhattan and with the geographic location of Georgia. There skyline is called the “bund” and rivals and other in China. Shanghai also has the Yellow Mountain where I think a group of us are going to hike and camp for a night, and a river town that is the Chinese version of Venice. We don’t know which order we are going to travel in but we do have Serena, a Chinese friend that we made during the Olympics. Serena lives in Shanghai and is an excellent tour guide and already said that we would show us around.
On a side note Beijing is starting to cool down. It is very noticeable that October is around the corner and the smell of fall is in the air. But I have heard that the 天气 (weather) in Shanghai is warm and on some days hot.
I think after this trip I am going to take a break and traveling within Beijing again. From the beginning of school on Aug. 26th I haven’t stayed in Beijing more than 6 consecutive nights without traveling to another Province.
That’s when we landed on plan C, Shanghai. We booked a flight leaving for Shanghai on Sat. Sept. 27th and returning on Fri. Oct. 3rd. I had originally anticipated on going to Shanghai later on during the trip when we have a 5 day weekend, but we are going to swap that with the Yunan trip instead and see if we can catch a cheaper flight. Shanghai is an amazingly westernized place for mainland China. The business district is the Chinese equivalent to Manhattan and with the geographic location of Georgia. There skyline is called the “bund” and rivals and other in China. Shanghai also has the Yellow Mountain where I think a group of us are going to hike and camp for a night, and a river town that is the Chinese version of Venice. We don’t know which order we are going to travel in but we do have Serena, a Chinese friend that we made during the Olympics. Serena lives in Shanghai and is an excellent tour guide and already said that we would show us around.
On a side note Beijing is starting to cool down. It is very noticeable that October is around the corner and the smell of fall is in the air. But I have heard that the 天气 (weather) in Shanghai is warm and on some days hot.
I think after this trip I am going to take a break and traveling within Beijing again. From the beginning of school on Aug. 26th I haven’t stayed in Beijing more than 6 consecutive nights without traveling to another Province.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Tsingtao Beer Festival
Every year for two weeks in September Tsingdao holds a beer festival in the costal city of Qingdao to comemerate there 150 years of tradition. In honor of their achievements we rounded up 11 of our friends and decided to travel over 500 miles by train and cab to see this festival. Devin, Regis and I left thursday night (10:45pm) out of Beijing Central train station with a one way ticket to Qingdao (In China you can only buy a return train ticket from the place you are returning from, weird... I know). You also might be asking yourself...hey Jim, why are you spelling the beer and the place similarly Tsingtao and Qingdao. Well reader glad you asked. Thats because Tsingtao beer was founded by Germans and they couldnt say words like Qingdao, so they improvised. Anyway we left thursday on what seemed like the train from hell. Our seats were in a car that was over sold by about 50 tickets so people where standing, sitting, squating, and laying just about everywhere. Smoking was allowed and I've come to the realization that the Chinese only have one volume: loud. I sat in a six seater with 5 other chinese in a seat that didnt recline, luckly enough I had the window and did'nt get stuck in the middle seat. This was by far the worst part of the trip. Everything from here on out was clear sailing. (This is actually a whitty pun because Qingdao was where the sailing venue was for Olympics). Serina, a Chinese friend of our was meeting us and other friedns for the festival, bought our return ticket for us on a much nicer speed train that was only 5 hours to beijing.
Once we got there (6am)we checked in the hotel and slept until around noon. After that we just walked around and got to see a part of China that was unique and refreshing from the big cities. Qingdao is a nautical city with a specialty in seafood and their surf. We got a feel for the city and walked along the beach until we met up with Serina and her friends. They took us to this really small but delicious Chinese Seafood resturaunt. This was one of the highlights of the trip because none of them could speak english and they were big on chinese tradition. They taught us the proper way to give your friends a toast and that you should "根北" (pronounced "Gen Bei", literally meaning bottoms up) two glasses instead of one because odd numbers are bad luck. The chinese guys taught me the proper way to march in the Chinese army because some of them are in the chinese version of R.O.T.C.. After we went to meet our American friends who took a later train not to miss their classes of friday. Together we went out to a bar and saw a bar tender light bottles on fire and flare with them, and caught up with everybody else.
"Its a marathon, not a race" was the theme for the Saterday. We woke up had a hearty breakfast of potatos, meat, and rice and headed to the festival. The festival was a huge venue of almost any type of European and Chinese bear you could think of. We started the day at the hofbrauhaus and ended up at the Tsingtao stand. Along the way I had the privledge of eating Shark on a stick for about 10 kuai. We ended up leaving the festival early because our 朋友 (chinese friends) wanted to take us to the beach. So we walked a few blocks and got to the beach and hopped into the Yellow sea for about 30mins. We dried off by playing soccer with a couple of chinese guys and left the beach for dinner a little while later. Again we decided to have seafood because it was so good the night before. We went to this bar street and had dinner outside on a patio with both sets of friends. At the resturaunt we met so Shanghainese men who I decided to toast to with the toast that I learned the night before. They went nuts because I knew this toast that they kept on toasting us back and one guy even gave me his hat and phone number in case I ever go to Shanghai. We ate and drank with them and celebrated Jeff's 21st birthday which was on this past monday. We had a great dinner and night went back to get some sleep beacuse our train early the next morning. The train I took back to Beijing was the same type of train that I took to Tianjin to see the olympic football game. I had so much space and was so comfortable that I got in a solid nap and studied some chinese.
The amazing thing about this weeked besides the seafood, drinking, 7hr train rides, chinese friends, and festivals was that it cost less than $150 American. We traveled a distance further than New York to D.C with hotel, food, drink and entertainment for next to nothing. The conclusion drawn from this weekend is that I am amazed in the amount of people that actually live in China. You hear about 1.3B people and you read about it in books but it takes a while to actually understand what that means. Qingdao is a city thats barely on the map in China and yet it has a population of 7M, only 1M less than NYC. This weekend I got an appreciation for what 1.3B people acually looks like and means in terms of country and infrastructure. I think I learned a lot more than I anticipated this weekend. http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/TsingtaoBeerFestival?authkey=Ig9xQYC1LyU#
Once we got there (6am)we checked in the hotel and slept until around noon. After that we just walked around and got to see a part of China that was unique and refreshing from the big cities. Qingdao is a nautical city with a specialty in seafood and their surf. We got a feel for the city and walked along the beach until we met up with Serina and her friends. They took us to this really small but delicious Chinese Seafood resturaunt. This was one of the highlights of the trip because none of them could speak english and they were big on chinese tradition. They taught us the proper way to give your friends a toast and that you should "根北" (pronounced "Gen Bei", literally meaning bottoms up) two glasses instead of one because odd numbers are bad luck. The chinese guys taught me the proper way to march in the Chinese army because some of them are in the chinese version of R.O.T.C.. After we went to meet our American friends who took a later train not to miss their classes of friday. Together we went out to a bar and saw a bar tender light bottles on fire and flare with them, and caught up with everybody else.
"Its a marathon, not a race" was the theme for the Saterday. We woke up had a hearty breakfast of potatos, meat, and rice and headed to the festival. The festival was a huge venue of almost any type of European and Chinese bear you could think of. We started the day at the hofbrauhaus and ended up at the Tsingtao stand. Along the way I had the privledge of eating Shark on a stick for about 10 kuai. We ended up leaving the festival early because our 朋友 (chinese friends) wanted to take us to the beach. So we walked a few blocks and got to the beach and hopped into the Yellow sea for about 30mins. We dried off by playing soccer with a couple of chinese guys and left the beach for dinner a little while later. Again we decided to have seafood because it was so good the night before. We went to this bar street and had dinner outside on a patio with both sets of friends. At the resturaunt we met so Shanghainese men who I decided to toast to with the toast that I learned the night before. They went nuts because I knew this toast that they kept on toasting us back and one guy even gave me his hat and phone number in case I ever go to Shanghai. We ate and drank with them and celebrated Jeff's 21st birthday which was on this past monday. We had a great dinner and night went back to get some sleep beacuse our train early the next morning. The train I took back to Beijing was the same type of train that I took to Tianjin to see the olympic football game. I had so much space and was so comfortable that I got in a solid nap and studied some chinese.
The amazing thing about this weeked besides the seafood, drinking, 7hr train rides, chinese friends, and festivals was that it cost less than $150 American. We traveled a distance further than New York to D.C with hotel, food, drink and entertainment for next to nothing. The conclusion drawn from this weekend is that I am amazed in the amount of people that actually live in China. You hear about 1.3B people and you read about it in books but it takes a while to actually understand what that means. Qingdao is a city thats barely on the map in China and yet it has a population of 7M, only 1M less than NYC. This weekend I got an appreciation for what 1.3B people acually looks like and means in terms of country and infrastructure. I think I learned a lot more than I anticipated this weekend. http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/TsingtaoBeerFestival?authkey=Ig9xQYC1LyU#
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
My First Post
September 17, 2008
So this is my first blog and my first post on a blog so hang in there if its not up to par the first go around. The good new is that it will only get better from here on in! The first thing that I want to tell everybody about is this saying that a lot of Taoist people ( I think there Taosit) live by. "Everything is like water", meaning that everything in life can be compared to water in a really simplistic way. I like it because when it was explained to me the person used the metaphor of a river running, saying that a river has a set path and is guided but at the same time a river erodes the land and creates its own path. Another comparison is that when water is violent you cannot see the bottom however when its calm you can see things more clearly. I try to keep that in mind when things in China get a little difficult and it makes it a little easier.
I am half way thru my first week of school and I think my classes are going really well so far. The thing about TBC (The Beijing Center) that I like the most is the classroom atmosphere of the classroom. Never have I ever felt so welcome to participate and felt like my opinion really mattered in a class discussion. My Sacred Texts of China teacher is a really knowledgable person on the subjects, he has studied in China, Shirlanka, and Iwoa. The class has 6 people including me and has a very laxed atmoshphere. The first class we went over the orgin of Buddism and the first stories of Buddha. In that class we are going to go over the texts of Buddism, Taoism, and Daoism. My next class was Chinese and that was intresting because the whole class was Chinese, not a word of english. I understood about 40% of what was said in class, but on the flipside I am going to get a lot out of this class and learn a ton of Chinese. My next class was Art of China and my teacher super smart and young. She graduated from Dartmouth, masters from Harvard, and she is going for she PHD from Harvard in Chinese Art. Her class is going to be tuff becuase I have to memorize a lot of dates and names. I am actually excited for this class becuase we are going to learn a lot of histoy too. My last class that I have from 7-10pm on tuesday nights is Management and this class was made a ton better because it is about Chinese business and what it means manage Chinese people with their work ethic and values. Today I am trying to get into this Chinese Economic and tomorrow I have Chinese and marketing. After class tomorrow I am going to the beer fest in Tsingdao for the weekend. Not bad for my first post right? I try to keep them shorter next time, I guess. I am going to try to post every other day during the week and take the weekends off. Hope you enjoyed and don't forget to send me email so I know whats going down in your neck of the woods!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/SilkRoadTrip?authkey=bBrRcbYLG_w#
So this is my first blog and my first post on a blog so hang in there if its not up to par the first go around. The good new is that it will only get better from here on in! The first thing that I want to tell everybody about is this saying that a lot of Taoist people ( I think there Taosit) live by. "Everything is like water", meaning that everything in life can be compared to water in a really simplistic way. I like it because when it was explained to me the person used the metaphor of a river running, saying that a river has a set path and is guided but at the same time a river erodes the land and creates its own path. Another comparison is that when water is violent you cannot see the bottom however when its calm you can see things more clearly. I try to keep that in mind when things in China get a little difficult and it makes it a little easier.
I am half way thru my first week of school and I think my classes are going really well so far. The thing about TBC (The Beijing Center) that I like the most is the classroom atmosphere of the classroom. Never have I ever felt so welcome to participate and felt like my opinion really mattered in a class discussion. My Sacred Texts of China teacher is a really knowledgable person on the subjects, he has studied in China, Shirlanka, and Iwoa. The class has 6 people including me and has a very laxed atmoshphere. The first class we went over the orgin of Buddism and the first stories of Buddha. In that class we are going to go over the texts of Buddism, Taoism, and Daoism. My next class was Chinese and that was intresting because the whole class was Chinese, not a word of english. I understood about 40% of what was said in class, but on the flipside I am going to get a lot out of this class and learn a ton of Chinese. My next class was Art of China and my teacher super smart and young. She graduated from Dartmouth, masters from Harvard, and she is going for she PHD from Harvard in Chinese Art. Her class is going to be tuff becuase I have to memorize a lot of dates and names. I am actually excited for this class becuase we are going to learn a lot of histoy too. My last class that I have from 7-10pm on tuesday nights is Management and this class was made a ton better because it is about Chinese business and what it means manage Chinese people with their work ethic and values. Today I am trying to get into this Chinese Economic and tomorrow I have Chinese and marketing. After class tomorrow I am going to the beer fest in Tsingdao for the weekend. Not bad for my first post right? I try to keep them shorter next time, I guess. I am going to try to post every other day during the week and take the weekends off. Hope you enjoyed and don't forget to send me email so I know whats going down in your neck of the woods!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Jim.Lechleitner/SilkRoadTrip?authkey=bBrRcbYLG_w#
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