This week has been frustrating. We have our one (legal) travel weekend coming up, and we’ve been making plans about where to go. While most of the group wanted to go south to Sichuan Province, Barry and I had designs on more exotic locales. We’d heard about Kashgar from an expat friend we met at a burger bar downtown, and from that point on we were hooked. Kashgar is in Xinjiang Province in the far west of China, basically in Tajikistan. It’s so unlike the rest of China that the Kite Runner movie uses it as a less-volatile filming location to Afghanistan. We were literally a few hours from booking our flights when the region exploded with ethnic violence between the Han Chinese majority and the Muslim Uygihur population. Once we’d seen that both Kashgar and Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital we’d have to fly through, had been locked down by thousands of People’s Liberation Army troops and that over 1,000 people were injured, we reluctantly changed our plans and are now headed south in a few days.
As much of a disappointment as this was, we still had an excellent weekend. To celebrate Independence day, like all good Americans, we had a cookout on the beach with tons of meat, beer, and (American!?!) football. Patricia brought a football with her, and it’s hilarious to watch the faces of completely mystified Chinese students try to make sense of why stupid Americans refer to this dumb looking brown egg as a football. They were really interested in the rules, but had a very difficult time trying to follow our explanations of them. Eventually, I had to resort to using the closest available thing to a Telestrator that I could find, a patch of sand and a stick. I like to think it helped.
We had a blast at the BBQ, even if it did start randomly pouring in the middle of the afternoon. Thankfully we had better weather the following day, when we embarked on what has easily been the biggest adventure of our time in Dalian. We knew a zoo existed, and we’d heard that they had some pretty ridiculous attractions (more on this soon), but we figured, you know, we’d just go like normal people. The subject came up at work one day, and somebody mentioned that Xie Peng knows a way to get to the zoo…without paying.
Needless to say, the idea intrigued us; not so much for the savings (it costs 10 RMB to get a ticket, about $1.50) but just because the concept of sneaking into a Chinese zoo would be such an intrinsically awesome story. We assumed the plan just involved a quick squeeze through a hole in a fence somewhere (or some comparable act of subterfuge). This was incorrect, as Xie Peng soon followed up with, “yeah, you climb two mountains, it take about two and half hours.” I am so there.
We left on Sunday morning on a bus that took us to some random place downtown. After about 10 minutes of wandering down side streets, we arrived at what looked like the entrance to a big public park (who knows, it may have actually just been a public park, I’m not sure). What I am sure of though , is that we started heading uphill and soon found ourselves in the middle of nowhere in the woods on one of the many mountains that surround the city of Dalian. It soon became apparent that Supreme Leader Xie Peng did not have as firm a grasp on our route as he had previously advertised, and we ended up wandering around for a while before we ran into a fellow hiker with a propensity for animals after the same free zoo admission we were who had a better sense of the area. Sure enough, two hours later, we fell out of the bushes and, well, into the zoo.
I use the term “zoo” here a little bit loosely. I think the actual title of the place is something along the lines of “Dalian Forest Park”. The place is enormous, and we actually had to climb up and over another mountain before we actually arrived at any animal enclosures. I think we might have been able to take a cable car thing and save ourselves some trouble, except that we kinda didn’t have any tickets for it. Oh well, it was a pleasant walk…down a cliff.
By the time we got to the bottom, we’d spent so much time sneaking in that we only had about an hour before the zoo closed, so we had to make sure not to dawdle. This was difficult, because zoos in China do not have nearly the same liability requirements as their American counterparts. This, in turn, makes for much more interesting exhibits. For example, I particularly enjoyed the display called, “Llamas wandering freely around the park that wound up chasing me”, or the timeless classic, “Two rhinos surrounded by a single four foot tall wood fence”. The real draw of the zoo though, is the so-called “violent animals area”. We knew about this because of its widely renowned attractions in which, for about eight bucks, one can purchase a live chicken that one can then toss to its wildly flapping instant death by any of a variety of large predators. I didn’t purchase any such product, but I will admit that I may have snapped a photo or two while some other dude caused havoc in the tiger pit….
Yeah, I bet PETA loves this country.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Give Me Your Baby: Xi’an Part 2
I’m sitting down to write this while my laundry agitates in our ersatz little washing machine that attaches to our shower. It’s been a long dusty day, which I will document fully in a future entry (it involves four mountains, illegal trespassing, and tigers), but right now I have to finish my description of last weekend before I feel any more like a delinquent blogger.
On Saturday morning we woke up and met our guide for the day, Mr. Jackie. Mr. Jackie was a former middle school teacher, the kind who had always tried to be “that cool teacher” to his students, and his past was clearly reflected in his humor. However, at 8 in the morning we were a little less receptive to his routine than I think he was used to. He spent most of the trip to our first site trying to wake us up by any means necessary: singing, freestyle rapping, or, most memorably, really unfunny jokes. Try this one: “A woman gets angry at her baby son and says to him, ‘I will feed you to the wolves in the morning’. A wolf outside hears her and waits outside the window. The morning comes but the mother does not throw the baby, and the wolf is, ‘oh I am so hungry you said you would give me your baby’ and he says, ‘so, all women are liars.’”*
….cricket….cricket…
Yeah, we didn’t think it was funny either. We couldn’t even tell when the joke was over except that Mr. Jackie started physically applauding his own comedic stylings. We figured if we clapped along he’d shut up, but it seems we only egged him on. It was a long car ride.
After a short stop at the Banpo settlement, an archaeological excavation of some of China’s oldest dwellings, we came to the centerpiece of our trip to Xi’an, the Bi Mai Yo, or Terracotta Warriors. The TCWs, along with the Great Wall, represent the most iconic, I think, attractions in China, and I couldn’t let myself come to this country without seeing them in person (even if it did mean taking an unapproved jaunt for the weekend). Before one can even approach the army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang though, one must first breach the garrison of cheap souvenir hawkers that surround the famous site on all sides for what I’m guessing was at least a kilometer walk. The TCWs are certainly imposing, but if I’m looking for an army to protect me, I think I’d pick these vicious vendors over the impressive yet stationary troops buried in the ground.
Finally we fought our way through the sea of humanity into the actual warrior warehouse itself. The site is still an active excavation, it’s just that they’ve built a massive building on top of it so that they can generate tourist revenue while they continue to dig. As the so-called 8th wonder of the world, the army is very impressive, through it was tough for their majesty to overcome all the touristyness of the experience. Still, it was certainly worth the trip. There are actually three different buildings housing the various trenches, though only one of them has a substantial number of standing warriors. Through the way the warriors are usually shown, the media propagates the myth that TCWs were all found standing at attention, ready for whatever might threaten the Emperor on the other side. This, though, is simply not the case. The only warriors that are actually standing are those that have been painstakingly restored. Their comrades lie strewn around the site, waiting for the Humpty-Dumpty doctors to put them back together again.
At this point, I’m going to skip ahead to Sunday because I’m a little pressed for time, even though we did plenty more driving around and looking at old things on Saturday. Before we had to fly back to Dalian, we had the morning free to putz around the old city. The weather wasn’t especially cooperating, but we wanted to make sure to climb the ancient city wall before we left Xi’an. Apparently, this is the oldest and most well preserved city wall in the world, which led Barry to comment, “If I ever need a wall built, I’m contacting the Chinese…they seem to know what they’re doing”. Clearly, they do, because this sucker is like1300 years old and it doesn’t look a day over 450.
There’s not much to do on the wall other than explore around it. Since it forms a square about 2 miles on each side and it was pouring rain for most of the morning, walking it wasn’t an option. Instead, we succumbed to one of those absurdly lame tourist traps and paid Golf Cart Man to drive us from the south gate to the west gate. Needless to say, I had initially been apprehensive about this, mostly because I associate this type of activity with old white people too out of shape to move themselves around, all wearing matching tour hats and personalized name tags identifying them as, “Dale Jones, Denver, Colorado”. All in all though, for the three bucks we paid for the trip, it was worth it. We got to see a whole new part of town, and didn’t get gawked at too badly in the process. From there, it was a short walk back to the hotel, then off to the airport for what was a mercifully less exciting trip than our first plane flight.
OK. Now that I’ve got last weekend covered, I can move on to the events of this past weekend…..later.
*This is completely unedited.
On Saturday morning we woke up and met our guide for the day, Mr. Jackie. Mr. Jackie was a former middle school teacher, the kind who had always tried to be “that cool teacher” to his students, and his past was clearly reflected in his humor. However, at 8 in the morning we were a little less receptive to his routine than I think he was used to. He spent most of the trip to our first site trying to wake us up by any means necessary: singing, freestyle rapping, or, most memorably, really unfunny jokes. Try this one: “A woman gets angry at her baby son and says to him, ‘I will feed you to the wolves in the morning’. A wolf outside hears her and waits outside the window. The morning comes but the mother does not throw the baby, and the wolf is, ‘oh I am so hungry you said you would give me your baby’ and he says, ‘so, all women are liars.’”*
….cricket….cricket…
Yeah, we didn’t think it was funny either. We couldn’t even tell when the joke was over except that Mr. Jackie started physically applauding his own comedic stylings. We figured if we clapped along he’d shut up, but it seems we only egged him on. It was a long car ride.
After a short stop at the Banpo settlement, an archaeological excavation of some of China’s oldest dwellings, we came to the centerpiece of our trip to Xi’an, the Bi Mai Yo, or Terracotta Warriors. The TCWs, along with the Great Wall, represent the most iconic, I think, attractions in China, and I couldn’t let myself come to this country without seeing them in person (even if it did mean taking an unapproved jaunt for the weekend). Before one can even approach the army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang though, one must first breach the garrison of cheap souvenir hawkers that surround the famous site on all sides for what I’m guessing was at least a kilometer walk. The TCWs are certainly imposing, but if I’m looking for an army to protect me, I think I’d pick these vicious vendors over the impressive yet stationary troops buried in the ground.
Finally we fought our way through the sea of humanity into the actual warrior warehouse itself. The site is still an active excavation, it’s just that they’ve built a massive building on top of it so that they can generate tourist revenue while they continue to dig. As the so-called 8th wonder of the world, the army is very impressive, through it was tough for their majesty to overcome all the touristyness of the experience. Still, it was certainly worth the trip. There are actually three different buildings housing the various trenches, though only one of them has a substantial number of standing warriors. Through the way the warriors are usually shown, the media propagates the myth that TCWs were all found standing at attention, ready for whatever might threaten the Emperor on the other side. This, though, is simply not the case. The only warriors that are actually standing are those that have been painstakingly restored. Their comrades lie strewn around the site, waiting for the Humpty-Dumpty doctors to put them back together again.
At this point, I’m going to skip ahead to Sunday because I’m a little pressed for time, even though we did plenty more driving around and looking at old things on Saturday. Before we had to fly back to Dalian, we had the morning free to putz around the old city. The weather wasn’t especially cooperating, but we wanted to make sure to climb the ancient city wall before we left Xi’an. Apparently, this is the oldest and most well preserved city wall in the world, which led Barry to comment, “If I ever need a wall built, I’m contacting the Chinese…they seem to know what they’re doing”. Clearly, they do, because this sucker is like1300 years old and it doesn’t look a day over 450.
There’s not much to do on the wall other than explore around it. Since it forms a square about 2 miles on each side and it was pouring rain for most of the morning, walking it wasn’t an option. Instead, we succumbed to one of those absurdly lame tourist traps and paid Golf Cart Man to drive us from the south gate to the west gate. Needless to say, I had initially been apprehensive about this, mostly because I associate this type of activity with old white people too out of shape to move themselves around, all wearing matching tour hats and personalized name tags identifying them as, “Dale Jones, Denver, Colorado”. All in all though, for the three bucks we paid for the trip, it was worth it. We got to see a whole new part of town, and didn’t get gawked at too badly in the process. From there, it was a short walk back to the hotel, then off to the airport for what was a mercifully less exciting trip than our first plane flight.
OK. Now that I’ve got last weekend covered, I can move on to the events of this past weekend…..later.
*This is completely unedited.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Rock Your Tongue: Xi’an Part 1
I know, I know, just like the master jerkface himself (Roger Clemens) I’ve done the exact thing I swore I would never do: neglect my blog. I’m blaming it on my job. Since I spend most of the day staring at a computer screen, the last thing I want to do when I get home is stare at one some more. Granted, I still wind up doing it, so maybe a better statement would be that I don’t want to have to stare at a computer screen and think at the same time.
Rather than following in the Rocket’s footsteps* and blaming my unlucky trainer for everything, I can atone for my sins. Although I’m guessing that a weekly update is probably the best I’m going to be able to pull off from here on out, this new update is really juicy. It has espionage, death-defying, communist propaganda… oh, and ox tongues.
Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here though. I’ll start by backtracking almost a week to last Thursday night. Following our morning teaching the English club (motto: Rock Your Tongue) how to act like degenerate American college kids, our eager students invited us to come to their weekly meeting to help them practice their English more. It sounded like fun, plus they’d bought us a bunch of beer; we gladly accepted. I really like the members of the English club, they remind me of the “bright young go-getters of ‘Hooray for Everything’” featured during the Super Bowl Halftime Show on The Simpsons. They wanted to know our opinions on everything, especially about the “imponderabilia of daily American life” (see, I took an anthropology class last semester, Rochester’s financial aid dollars at work). The most interesting aspect of the meeting though wasn’t the conversation though, so much as the poster on the wall describing a past week’s discussion topic: US values (“Everyone is born free and equal, every vote counts”) versus Chinese values (“Majority rules. The minority has to go along with the majority.”)** Every now and then we get a reminder that, in China, the Chairman and his party are watching…this was one of those times.
The next day, we brought a little more American culture to the orient by skipping out of work early on a Friday. Here’s where the espionage comes in. We’d made plans to fly to the old capital of Xi’an in central China for the weekend. Problem was, any travel outside Dalian is forbidden by the program, so we had to make our visit on the sly. Don’t worry though, my bosses don’t know about this blog. Even if they did though, it wouldn’t matter; Mao still won’t let them read it.
Following our escape from the cube farm and into some nearby taxis, we soon boarded our plane. However, at numerous points throughout the flight, it was unclear if we would be exiting the plane when it was actually on the ground. I have NEVER been on a flight where people literally screamed as the plane just dropped (more than once!). At the time, I was sitting next to my friend Barry who has some piloting experience and informed me that for “turbulence” to feel like that on a plane that size, we probably just fell several hundred feet. Thanks Barry. The funniest part of this whole thing was the preflight video explaining what position to assume should the plane actually crash. Normal people should brace themselves on the seat in front of them, those in exit rows should bend over and hug their legs, but, according to the film, “fat people” should just grip the hell out of the armrest and pray. Watching the onscreen stewardess act this out almost made up for the terrible “fright” (say it out loud and then think about where I’m writing this from).
Once we’d landed (and kissed the ground, enthralled to be standing, once again, on it), we dropped our stuff at the hotel and hit the town. As China’s ancient capital, Xi’an has about as much history as you’d expect it to. Unfortunately, one weekend is not enough to cover 1000+ years, so we had to prioritize. As such, we spent most of Friday night wandering around the Islamic Quarter, one of the first places in China where we’ve seen substantial expression of any major religion (according to Marx and Mao, “the opiate of the masses). It was also the first real chance for us to test our bargaining skills with the hundreds of locals each selling the basically same set of touristy tchatchkeys. I knew I needed to pick one up, so I pit two vendors against each other over a copy of Mao’s (in)famous “Little Red Book”. One offered it to me for about ten bucks, I got the other to hand it over for two. I think I like this town.
We’d shopped up an appetite, so we hit one of the restaurants in the area that looked like it had the two characteristics we wanted in a Muslim Quarter eatery, 1.) Lamb, and 2.) a menu with pictures. We leafed through it for a while and ordered a three of what turned out to be mediocre attempts at food (including really gross gamey lamb). Thankfully though, Pedro and I had talked the others into going out on a limb and ordering a plate of ox tongue. To all those who are contemplating eating bovine mouth muscle products let me say this: get over how it looks, shut up, and eat it. It is up there with the best pot roast you can get anywhere. Seriously. I will now be checking the Wegman’s butcher counter for my new favorite cut of meat.
Full and happy on a variety meat high, we headed back to the hotel for a much needed break before the next day’s adventure to one of the most famous archaeological sights in China, or, for that matter, the world. Next time: Xi’an, the stunning conclusion.
*Or, if you will, those of Manny “I injected myself with those fertility drugs because I just wanted to be like that pregnant man who was popular for two weeks a year ago” Ramirez.
**These are direct quotes, I am not making these up.
Rather than following in the Rocket’s footsteps* and blaming my unlucky trainer for everything, I can atone for my sins. Although I’m guessing that a weekly update is probably the best I’m going to be able to pull off from here on out, this new update is really juicy. It has espionage, death-defying, communist propaganda… oh, and ox tongues.
Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here though. I’ll start by backtracking almost a week to last Thursday night. Following our morning teaching the English club (motto: Rock Your Tongue) how to act like degenerate American college kids, our eager students invited us to come to their weekly meeting to help them practice their English more. It sounded like fun, plus they’d bought us a bunch of beer; we gladly accepted. I really like the members of the English club, they remind me of the “bright young go-getters of ‘Hooray for Everything’” featured during the Super Bowl Halftime Show on The Simpsons. They wanted to know our opinions on everything, especially about the “imponderabilia of daily American life” (see, I took an anthropology class last semester, Rochester’s financial aid dollars at work). The most interesting aspect of the meeting though wasn’t the conversation though, so much as the poster on the wall describing a past week’s discussion topic: US values (“Everyone is born free and equal, every vote counts”) versus Chinese values (“Majority rules. The minority has to go along with the majority.”)** Every now and then we get a reminder that, in China, the Chairman and his party are watching…this was one of those times.
The next day, we brought a little more American culture to the orient by skipping out of work early on a Friday. Here’s where the espionage comes in. We’d made plans to fly to the old capital of Xi’an in central China for the weekend. Problem was, any travel outside Dalian is forbidden by the program, so we had to make our visit on the sly. Don’t worry though, my bosses don’t know about this blog. Even if they did though, it wouldn’t matter; Mao still won’t let them read it.
Following our escape from the cube farm and into some nearby taxis, we soon boarded our plane. However, at numerous points throughout the flight, it was unclear if we would be exiting the plane when it was actually on the ground. I have NEVER been on a flight where people literally screamed as the plane just dropped (more than once!). At the time, I was sitting next to my friend Barry who has some piloting experience and informed me that for “turbulence” to feel like that on a plane that size, we probably just fell several hundred feet. Thanks Barry. The funniest part of this whole thing was the preflight video explaining what position to assume should the plane actually crash. Normal people should brace themselves on the seat in front of them, those in exit rows should bend over and hug their legs, but, according to the film, “fat people” should just grip the hell out of the armrest and pray. Watching the onscreen stewardess act this out almost made up for the terrible “fright” (say it out loud and then think about where I’m writing this from).
Once we’d landed (and kissed the ground, enthralled to be standing, once again, on it), we dropped our stuff at the hotel and hit the town. As China’s ancient capital, Xi’an has about as much history as you’d expect it to. Unfortunately, one weekend is not enough to cover 1000+ years, so we had to prioritize. As such, we spent most of Friday night wandering around the Islamic Quarter, one of the first places in China where we’ve seen substantial expression of any major religion (according to Marx and Mao, “the opiate of the masses). It was also the first real chance for us to test our bargaining skills with the hundreds of locals each selling the basically same set of touristy tchatchkeys. I knew I needed to pick one up, so I pit two vendors against each other over a copy of Mao’s (in)famous “Little Red Book”. One offered it to me for about ten bucks, I got the other to hand it over for two. I think I like this town.
We’d shopped up an appetite, so we hit one of the restaurants in the area that looked like it had the two characteristics we wanted in a Muslim Quarter eatery, 1.) Lamb, and 2.) a menu with pictures. We leafed through it for a while and ordered a three of what turned out to be mediocre attempts at food (including really gross gamey lamb). Thankfully though, Pedro and I had talked the others into going out on a limb and ordering a plate of ox tongue. To all those who are contemplating eating bovine mouth muscle products let me say this: get over how it looks, shut up, and eat it. It is up there with the best pot roast you can get anywhere. Seriously. I will now be checking the Wegman’s butcher counter for my new favorite cut of meat.
Full and happy on a variety meat high, we headed back to the hotel for a much needed break before the next day’s adventure to one of the most famous archaeological sights in China, or, for that matter, the world. Next time: Xi’an, the stunning conclusion.
*Or, if you will, those of Manny “I injected myself with those fertility drugs because I just wanted to be like that pregnant man who was popular for two weeks a year ago” Ramirez.
**These are direct quotes, I am not making these up.
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