Today is my last full day in Hangzhou. Things have been good here. There is a lake in the middle of town. The mountains are nice. I get to practice my Chinese. Earlier I didn't know if it was good or not, now I know, it's awful. Chinese grammer has got to be the most complicated subject in the world. I can't for the life of me understand it. At least I know now how difficult this language would be to learn. Nevertheless I would like to come back. Hopefully I can arrange a return here while in grad school.
Last weekend I went to Shanghai. It was my first time there, and the city is impressive. They have an IKEA in Shanghai. We were traveling with a Swede battling a severe case of diahhrea (that word is impossible to spell) induced by a tuna sandwich he ate at a cafe here which I happen to love. I just drink the coffee there you see, no food. He was miserable on the train to Shanghai, and my Dutch friend and I found this hilarious. I wish I didn't do this, but I find myself laughing at minor misfortune now. The Swede spoiled our fun by perking up immensely when we went by the IKEA. My first meal in Shanghai was of Swedish meatballs, eaten in the vastness of the IKEA's retail space. The Swede insisted.
Shanghai has a river down the middle of it, and on one side is the old, colonial Bund. On the other side is Pudong, modern and futuristic. We found a great hostel with a roof-top backpacker cafe just steps from the bund. From there we spent the evening watching the skyscrapers in Pudong light up. Of course we were not sleeping at that hostel. The Swede booked one on the other side of town, much closer to the IKEA.
The air quality in Shanghai did not seem problematic. Both times I've been to Beijing breathing has made me sick. My throat hurts and my sinuses start to act up. In Shanghai, no problem. There is a fairly kitcshy area called the Yu Gardens near the Bund where we spent a bit of time eating. It's supposed to look like "Old Shanghai." It's a little annoying, like Disneyworld. The food is cheaper in the Yu Gardens though. There is also an area of older, colonial building on tree-lined streets called the French Concession. We spent an afternoon there joking about how European it was and how we expected to see men wearing socks with Sandals. The Europeans I was traveling with cannot understand why we Americans insist on separating sandals from socks. They apparently regard their socks as a sort of security blanket.
The problem with Shanghai is that it is very easy to live a European/American life, and you are not forced to learn Chinese. If I come back here and choose to live in Shanghai I will have to be careful not to fall into that.
Tomorrow I go to Qingdao, provided my visa extension comes through as planned, and will meet a friend from undergrad for a few days before heading back to Hong Kong, and then back home.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
huangshan
Last weekend I went to the Huangshan Mountains, aka the Yellow Mountains. Part of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was filmed there. I was walking home one day and I passed a travel agency. I decided to go in there and try to set up a trip to the Yellow Mountains, we had been talking about it for a few days. Seemed like luck that I passed by. I walked in and they spoke no English. I did it in Chinese the best I could and figured that things were okay, I thought I had a bus ride, hotel, park passes, and tour guide arranged. Upon getting to the park I found that I had that arranged, and much more, my friends and I (3 people including me) were part of a Chinese tour group. The red hats, and the orange hats that line up endlessly at Tienanmen Square to see Mao, that was us. I got a red hat. We followed a guy with a loudspeaker. We were the only non-Chinese in the group, which thankfully was not huge. I thought the trip was verging on disaster and my friends were a little angry at what I had gotten them into. Their Chinese, hard to believe, is worse than mine so I was the go to guy. My friends and I wanted to hike up the mountain, they wanted to take a cable car. I realized that we would never find our hotel on our own, the mountain was huge, so after much confused arguing in English and Chinese, I persuaded my friends to go with the Chinese group. That was a low point. After we got up there, the scenery was incredible, although the crowds were huge. It is the China that you see in movies. We walked on the ridge line all afternoon and got to our mountaintop hotel just as the sky opened up in a huge rainstorm. Our guide warned us constantly that it was about to rain. We were fairly angry in general, so we did not buy a raincoat as an act of defiance. Thankfully we were not rained on. The rain cleared away after dinner and we saw one of the most incredible sunsets I have ever seen. The mountains are in the clouds. We stayed in a dorm room with about 5 other Chinese guys. I went to bed about 10pm, totally exhausted, but did not sleep much, because one of the Chinese guys had the most severe snoring I have ever heard. It sounded like animals were fighting in his throat. He probably will not live for very long, either because of whatever is causing that horrible noise, or someone will kill him out of annoyance.
We were awoken at 330am, time to see the sunset. We walked in the dark on slick stone sidewalks. Sometimes on the edge of hills, no rails, and steep drops. We walked to a hilltop, mountaintop? I don't know. I was almost completely disoriented. Some of our group were hiking in pajamas, two people, a mother and daughter. We called them the "pajama people." The pajama people were the slowest. My dutch friend has a light, and the guide asked us to walk at the back of the group, to sort of add some definition to where our group was in the darkness. The pajama people, however, kept slipping even further behind. Around 4:30, after hiking for an hour in total darkness, other than my dutch friend's light, we lost the pajama people. I asked the dutch guy if we should go back for them. He was even less sympathetic to the Chinese group experience than I was, and his response was "absolutely not," and he kept going. So we didn't see the pajama people for about 5 hours, and somehow they turned up at the bottom with us. I have no idea how that happened. We arrived at a hilltop to watch the sunset, but the fog or the clouds were too thick, we didn't see it. It was time to hike 8km down the mountain, all stairs. We were going down pretty well when we happened upon a possibly intoxicated, rather fat Chinese man. He kept daring us to climb an impossibly steep series of stairs up to a mountaintop. Of course we all tried to do it. The five of us (my group plus two Chinese from the large Chinese group - the five of us wanted to hike down together while the rest took the cable car down), sprinted up, holding onto a rope at the side of the stairs. About halfway up we realized that it was a stupid idea, and the Chinese man had left already so he would not witness our humiliation. I am slightly ashamed, but not really ashamed, to admit that we stopped, and the dutch guy kept going. So I sat on a very steep Chinese staircase on the side of a mountain for an uncomfortably long period of time, but the views were nice. The views were very nice. The scenery in the Huangshan is some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The walk down 8 km of stairs completely exhausted us, and suggested that a walk up 8km of stairs the previous day might not have been possible. It seems in the end, that by going with the Chinese group, I might have stumbled into the right thing.
We were awoken at 330am, time to see the sunset. We walked in the dark on slick stone sidewalks. Sometimes on the edge of hills, no rails, and steep drops. We walked to a hilltop, mountaintop? I don't know. I was almost completely disoriented. Some of our group were hiking in pajamas, two people, a mother and daughter. We called them the "pajama people." The pajama people were the slowest. My dutch friend has a light, and the guide asked us to walk at the back of the group, to sort of add some definition to where our group was in the darkness. The pajama people, however, kept slipping even further behind. Around 4:30, after hiking for an hour in total darkness, other than my dutch friend's light, we lost the pajama people. I asked the dutch guy if we should go back for them. He was even less sympathetic to the Chinese group experience than I was, and his response was "absolutely not," and he kept going. So we didn't see the pajama people for about 5 hours, and somehow they turned up at the bottom with us. I have no idea how that happened. We arrived at a hilltop to watch the sunset, but the fog or the clouds were too thick, we didn't see it. It was time to hike 8km down the mountain, all stairs. We were going down pretty well when we happened upon a possibly intoxicated, rather fat Chinese man. He kept daring us to climb an impossibly steep series of stairs up to a mountaintop. Of course we all tried to do it. The five of us (my group plus two Chinese from the large Chinese group - the five of us wanted to hike down together while the rest took the cable car down), sprinted up, holding onto a rope at the side of the stairs. About halfway up we realized that it was a stupid idea, and the Chinese man had left already so he would not witness our humiliation. I am slightly ashamed, but not really ashamed, to admit that we stopped, and the dutch guy kept going. So I sat on a very steep Chinese staircase on the side of a mountain for an uncomfortably long period of time, but the views were nice. The views were very nice. The scenery in the Huangshan is some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The walk down 8 km of stairs completely exhausted us, and suggested that a walk up 8km of stairs the previous day might not have been possible. It seems in the end, that by going with the Chinese group, I might have stumbled into the right thing.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Hangzhou
I'm in Hangzhou, sitting in a Sofitel, and its about to thunderstorm. I wanted to find a cheaper place to use the internet, but its getting very dark all of the sudden, I just saw some lightening, and I seem to have no choice but to go here to use the internet.
I still don't really know where to go to use the internet cheaply near my apartment. I live in a huge building about 20 minutes ride away from the city center, something like my old situation in Hanoi, but here the scale is bigger, even though Hangzhou is a smaller city than Hanoi.
It is now storming violently, a lot of wind. I go to language school every day for four hours and have two different classes inside that time. One speaking for two hours and one grammer for two hours, but it all turns into speaking, because we are all terrible at reading, writing, and grammer. It's hard to say how good I am, but I am enjoying it.
Hangzhou was actually a great choice for a city in China to visit. It is not like Beijing, the air is breatheable, there are shady streets, and there is a huge lake to the west of the city. The city does not extend around the lake, because on the far side of it there are mountains. Supposedly there are tea plantations out there, and we plan on visiting them one of these days. Shanghai is about 1.5 hours north of here, and I'm going in a couple weekends.
I have about 10-15 classmates at various levels of Chinese. About 1/3 Americans. I'm probably going to eat dinner with a Swede and a Dutch guy. I live across the hall from a Chinese-Ecuadorian. It's a diverse crowd.
I actually like this city, which is more than I can say for any other Chinese city I've visited.
My room is tiny. I am figuring out the buses, or trying to. Nothing really unusual has happened, other than the first night here. I was supposed to be met at this hotel by a guy named Mr. Song. He didn't show so I was kind of stuck at about midnight on the side of the road. I found an expensive hotel, and it turned out fine.
I still don't really know where to go to use the internet cheaply near my apartment. I live in a huge building about 20 minutes ride away from the city center, something like my old situation in Hanoi, but here the scale is bigger, even though Hangzhou is a smaller city than Hanoi.
It is now storming violently, a lot of wind. I go to language school every day for four hours and have two different classes inside that time. One speaking for two hours and one grammer for two hours, but it all turns into speaking, because we are all terrible at reading, writing, and grammer. It's hard to say how good I am, but I am enjoying it.
Hangzhou was actually a great choice for a city in China to visit. It is not like Beijing, the air is breatheable, there are shady streets, and there is a huge lake to the west of the city. The city does not extend around the lake, because on the far side of it there are mountains. Supposedly there are tea plantations out there, and we plan on visiting them one of these days. Shanghai is about 1.5 hours north of here, and I'm going in a couple weekends.
I have about 10-15 classmates at various levels of Chinese. About 1/3 Americans. I'm probably going to eat dinner with a Swede and a Dutch guy. I live across the hall from a Chinese-Ecuadorian. It's a diverse crowd.
I actually like this city, which is more than I can say for any other Chinese city I've visited.
My room is tiny. I am figuring out the buses, or trying to. Nothing really unusual has happened, other than the first night here. I was supposed to be met at this hotel by a guy named Mr. Song. He didn't show so I was kind of stuck at about midnight on the side of the road. I found an expensive hotel, and it turned out fine.
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