New Cell Number

+86 1528 456 2047

New address

49 cuo Lang rd
shangri-la, Yunnan 674440
china
中国云南省香格里拉县
建塘镇北冂社区
措廊49号674440

Hong Kong and Shangri-la

So three weeks in Hong Kong have just some to an end. Tomorrow morning after a 2 hour train ride, 1 hour bus ride, 2 hour flight, and 30min taxi I will be back in Kunming to close out my apartment and move to Shangri-la for the next couple months.

Hong Kong has been great. Worlds apart from China, there is even border control, customs and Hong Kong visas. Sort of defeats the one country two systems idea.

On the way to dinner the other night I noticed a young couple pushing a stroller. Just then I noticed the woman bend down to attend to the child. The child sat up, just above the top of the baby stroller exposing its grey hair and the pointed ears of a schnauzer. I thought this was funny.

Over a dinner of american style hamburgers and shakes we started talking about the office. Someone mentioned that there were local versions of the office in many countries, the US, UK, Germany. Then we all imagined what a Hong Kong office would be like. In the group there were several Hong Kong office workers who had first hand experience with Hong Kong office life. They suggested the sitcom be extended to 2 hours to encompass the long 8am-9pm Hong Kong work day. Slightly off-topic some one asked the group if anyone else takes naps in the bathroom. Surprisingly several people responded yes without hesitation or embarrassment. I have never slept in a bathroom and never imagined people took trips to the bathroom for napping on the toilet.

On the way home another stroller approached us on the sidewalk. This one was an actual doggie stroller with a pug inside.

pictures

Motorcycle trip across western Sichuan and NW Yunnan

We are back and done with the trip.

Photos here

enjoy

DAY TWENTYONE

Walked around town, casey got a tibetian jacket made. Parked the bikes at a friends house and chatted in the afternoon. On the 12h sleeper bus back to kunming now. Afterwards casey is going hiking with a college friend and I am off to Hong Kong for a few weeks.

 

DAY TWENTY

40 km. Short ride in the grass land ended even shorter when a local guy got a nasty cut on his ankle. 3hours and 25 stitches later and it was dark.

DAY NINETEEN

0km. Lazy day Internet repairs and a movie projected on the white side of an unsuspecting Tibetian house. Looks like the journey will end here. Got a couple day rides and repairs lined up and an over night bus to Kunming at the end of the week.

DAY EIGHTEEN

200km? 7hours. 3 flat tires and 1 leaky valve stem. Nice road in parts... Petty rocky peaks. Back in Shangri-la now for a few days including some more repairs.

DAY SEVENTEEN

240km 7hours. Flat tire. Beautiful road again... over a pass and into an amazing canyon. Neat white rammed earth houses. Saw some quail with babies. In Xiang Cheng(乡城) now 2-300km from Shangrila.

DAY SIXTEEN

230km? 7hours. Another broken bolt, a large piece of plastic including the tail light and turn signals fell off, and the 3 day old clutch cable broke. Very beautiful ride again. High mountains pine forest and alpine meadows makes me wish we had a tent and were hiking. Back in Li Tang now maybe for a few days. This is turning into more of a learn how to fix Zong Shen motorcycles with no parts class or watch your motorcycle fall apart while you ride it nightmare rather than a journey through the Tibetian highlands of Si Chuan and Yun Nan trip. What will break tomorrow? Bets are open. Saw marmot and pica like creatures today... not sure what they were because I didn't know China had either. Had amazing Tibetian dumplings and soup tonight, stuffed ourselves for less than Chinese food would have cost.

DAY FIFTEEN

200km? 7hours.Two broken bolts, cracked frame and oil leak. All fixed this afternoon except the oil leak. In La Ri Ma township(拉日马乡) best riding yet heat dirt road no cars, beautiful country. Made a spectacle in town just by being here. Huge circles gathered around us every time we stopped walking. A 40 year old dude spoke some of his foreign language with us... sounded like a bunch of t's a's and k's. Went up on a grassy hill and took some glamour shots with three much too happy guys. Got to try riding up a creek for the first time and got pretty wet.

DAY FOURTEEN

180km? 50hours. In Lu Huo(炉霍) tonight. Bad road deep deep  dust lots of trucks. Still beautiful and Tibetan... Getting drier and less steep. Tomorrow will try and find an alternative route away from the highway and over a mountain on a dirt road for 150km. Got stopped by the police at gun point... Three young guys... one with a machine gun and two with assault shotguns. We played dumb as normal and the finally produced the word passport. Their camera wouldn't work to take pictures of our passports and they told us the road was dangerous and let us go.

DAY THIRTEEN

100km? 3hours. Went in this morning to get Casey's visa and waited until 4 to pick it up. The road out of Kang Ding was under construction for the first 40 all one lane big trucks and dust to block the sun. Back in Ta Gong tonight. Heading north tomorrow.

DAY TWELVE

0 km.  All day spent in Kangding. Found the visa extension office, but are waiting for tomorrow to extend casey's visa. Spent several hours fixing things broken by the last mechanic. Found out both the speedometer/odeometer pickups are broken probably means no repairs until i can get replacements back in kunming. Went to the post office again to mail a watch to Hainan.  In Litang the postal worker from hell told us it was forbidden to mail batteries or things with batteries...like watches.  Here we walked in said we would like to mail the watch and the postal worker replied here is a box it is $0.50 and what address would you like to mail it to.  Five minutes and the watch was mailed. Back to the small towns and villages tomorrow.

 

 

Tree and Mushroom Investigation, Part 3

The first several hours of the decent were all in the clouds.  Part way down we landed on a very pretty bench complete with its on creek and the ruins of a stone house. When the clouds cleared we could see the the valley below and several small villages in the distance.  The bench itself reminded me of a campsite in the goat rocks wilderness in WA.  It had a very pleasant feel and watching the creek flow off the bench and disappear over the edge with Mt. Adams and Rainier in the distance was priceless.

 

At the bottom of the big slope and out of the clouds we ran across our first village and the first set of hikers.  It was a group of 4 French people, 3 chinese, and 2-5 guides. It was unclear who was an actual guide and who was just along with their friends.  They had split the trip into three days and were just starting their third day. They also had there packs on horses.  We talked for a while with the guides and the guides friends before continuing down the valley. 

 

Seeing the chinese tourists and talking to them, immediately reminded me of how I dislike chinese tourism.  It wasn't anything in particular about these tourists, but a dislike built up over a year and a half in china.  It is probably not even specific to chinese tourists, it just that domestic tourism is huge in china and I have been around tourists quite a bit.  The bit that got me thinking about these tourists was their brand new full setup. Each had a new pack, new boots, hiking pants,  hiking shirt, heavy jacket, hiking hat, hiking scarf, fanny pack, hiking poles, and big DSLR.  On top of that they were tip toeing around the grass to avoid mud and cowpies, they didnt want get their boots dirty.  Their boots were surprizingly clean, as if they had been tiptoeing for two days or been washing the boots each night. There is just something about the mentality that hiking or experiencing nature means or requires going out and buying a the lot of new things and then trying to keep nature off of them and off of you.

 

The valley was long, 4 hours long and beautiful all the way. A river ran down the center, clear enough to see the gravel and stones at the bottom. Scattered throughout the valley were small stone houses surrounded by shepards, cows, goats, and mules.  Wildflowers were abundant in the meadows along the river.  At the end of the valley the mountains closed in and became much steeper, turning the valley into a ravine.  Shortly there after there was a fork in the trail. On path led down and across the river, the other kept to the side of the ravine and continued.  I knew our destination lay at the end of the ravine, so elected to continue in the current direction.  Ten minutes later we ran into an enormous landslide.  A short inspection revealed a small makeshift path leading up and across the landslide to what appeared to be a road.  The landslide was in fact created by the building of that road.  The trail had been entirely wiped out by road building.  Roads in the area had a distinct impact on the terrain (landslides, runoff, scar like appearances) and as i mentioned on the people and lifestyles.  This particular road had caused landslides up the entire ravine, wiping out all the lower vegetation and uprooting most of the trees, not to mention dumping sediment into the river and changing it to the color of liquid mud. The road builders lived in canvas tents not far from the current end of the road.  The tents were very simple with nothing more than simple metal cots inside.  To support the workers there were several cooks/wives with their own chickens and pigs roaming around on the incomplete road.

 

We made it to the village around 7pm after 11 hours of walking and about 4800ft of decent. The guestho9ouse was run by Teacher Zhang and we were immediately offered pears and grapes while dinner was being prepared. The black flies were horrendous and all attracted to the empty plastic table we sat around. At dinner we were offered wine made by the teacher himself. I of course said yes and came to find out there were some catholic monks in the village 100 years ago who taught the locals to grow grapes and make wine.  The wine was interesting and very sour, but drinkable. Breakfast was yakbutter tea and a plate sized biscuit called baba.

 

The next morning we caught a bus to deqin on a harrowing one lane road.  Siting in front of me on the bus was a very young and very petite lady with pnuemonia.  Every 5min or so she would have a caughing bout that sounded like she was drowning and then spit a mouthful of fluid out the window. I was privileged enough to watch the fluid fly/ streak past my closed window.  In deqin we got another bus the mingyong glacier. 90min up 2600ft and 30min down. The glacier at the top was impressive, but the viewing platform was too far away to really experience the glacier. We did get to see some large chunks calve off and crash down.

 

That night we stayed at another guest house, that rather resembled a three walled barn with some beds because that is exactly what it was. The family had not finished building their house/guesthouse and one entire braod wall was open providing excellent views and a pleasant breeze. The place was family fun, ma, pop, two sons and a pair of senile grandparents. Grandmother was generally ignored by the family while she went about the place doing things i could never figure out. Grampa started drinking liquor by himself around 2pm was drunk shortly after and just sat looking at the landscape and holding his prayer beads. Both were out by 7pm.  The two sons were 23 and 21 and apparently the biggest in the village and good at fighting. No one in the family had gone to school and could read very little chinese or tibetian.  Both of the boys had girlfriends staying with them at the house.  The older son, White Horse or Baima, had a 20something teacher from Hebei, while Rishi had a 45year old deranged finnish lady. The family was very nice and I talked to the father about tibetians and han chinese relations.  I also found out that they started eating rice in the 1980's but still dont like it. 

 

That night two of junyang's friends and a random person they picked up on the trip up joined us at the guesthouse and we all set out the next morning for the second portion of our hike.

 

To be continued...

Tree and Mushroom Investigation, part 2

Most of the houses in the area (the area encompassing most of nw yunnan and western sichuan) use a wood stove for cooking and heating purposes.  The stoves are about 2ft wide, 2ft tall and 4ft deep shaped like a capital T in that the back of the stove is 4ft wide.  In the front section of the stove there is a removable circular plate. When the plate is removed a wok may be placed into the whole directly above the fire for cooking. Normally a large kettle and a large boiling bot sit on the back full of water. 

 

As it turned out, we brought most of what we needed for our multi-day adventure.  Everything except two spoons, one for eric and one for junyang.  That evening, eric and junyang set about carving spoons from pieces of firewood.  Junyang produced a crude spatula while eric produced something looking more like a sugar spoon.  Dinner that night was delicious.  Pork and corn, Pork and chilies, pumpkin, eggs and tomato, and rice.

 

The next morning we got up at 6am to have breakfast and start hiking.  Just as we were getting out of bed, Junyang asked "if it is raining will we still go?"  It was actually already raining.  "yes." It rained for most of the day, but only lightly.  Breakfast was rice and leftovers and just as delicious as the night before. Then we were off. We had decided to go with out a guide. Despite several people telling us we would get lost, or we needed a guide to protect us from wolves and bears.  The latter reasons just made me want a guide less, as i felt like i was being talked to like a small child and the person talking knew nothing.  Try looking up the chinese wolf or moon bear.  Or try finding one in inhabited china.   Junyang had received directions for the first 15min of the hike and we both had recieved directions for the rest.  We got lost 10min into the hike.  Not really lost, just not sure which trail to take out of the village. Junyang volunteered to wander into the nearest dogless house and ask directions again. Once we were on the trail, it was up, up up for the next 7hours.  Not only was it just up, it was steep.  The clouds provided a low ceiling preventing us from ever really seeing upslope too far.  There were breaks now and again that allowed glimpses of false summits.  So many false summits.  We would arrive at the top of one just to be rewarded withe the sight of a larger, higher, steeper hill to climb next.  We went from 5600-12000ft. 

 

All the way up there were signs of human habitation and we passed through 3 villages and one abandoned village near the summit.  The farms, villages, and pastures all seemed to belong there.  There were no roads past Dimaluo, just people, animals, crops, plants and trees.  It just all fit.  There wasn't a sense that the people there were destroying their surroundings or making huge mess of a very pretty place which is so common to me in chinese cities and larger villages near roads.  The main difference being the village's remoteness, self-dependance, and lack of commericial china, or commericial anything.  Thats not to say there were not chinese clothing and some assorted packaged foods. 
 

After a short rest and snack on the top, we started our decent into a beautiful green glacial valley.  Two hours later we found a nice spot to camp next to the river, set up camp, and began making beans and millet for dinner. Junyang had been hiking at a respectable pace from the begining, although much slower than eric and I.  By noon junyang had spent his three bowls of white rice worth of energy, and reduced his speed to a crawl.  While waiting for him to catch up, eric and I would discuss the likelihood of Junyang making it to the top, take bets on how many minutes it would take him to catch up, and try and decide the best way to talk to junyang about picking up the pace or we would never make it the valley before nightfall.   We made it to the valley just at nightfall.  Dinner was ready 30min later and we began to eat.  Junyang had a cup of food and said he was full. Eric and exchanged looks of concern and tried to convince him to eat more in vain. Everyone was out by 8. 

 

The valley was also inhabited.  There were a scattering of summer shepard/woodcutter's houses and herds of cows, goats, and pigs. It all seemed to fit.  There was active timber cutting on most of the slopes as evidenced by the piles of logs in the valleys and the log skidding trails coming down the slopes. Timber cutting here seemed to fit more than any I have ever seen.  Mostly because of its small scale and the large size of the nearby forest, but also because the wood wasnt being trucked off. It was being used to build the houses right there.  In addition to the timber, farming and pastoralism in the area, the local's also collected mushrooms for personal consumption and for sale.   It was very clear the lifestyle and the ecosystem were only possible under low population pressure.  Doubling the population, or just the livestock or wood consumption would have huge effects on the local environment.  Despite the presence of people, it still felt like a wild place.  Thats saying something about what wild means.

 

Next morning we were up with dawn and eating oatmeal with Xinjiang raisins.  Junyang again ate very little despite our pressuring him to eat more. Within 30min of leaving camp we lost junyang, or he lost us.  We are not sure how, as there was only one trail.  We found him eventually on the other side of the valley.  Apparently he had seen the village at the top of the valley and had followed a 'trail' there.  Eventually we did cross the side trail to the village, but it wasn't the goat trail junyang had taken.  It was straight up agian, but beautiful the whole way..  Into a cloud and up to 13600ft.  The air was considerably thinner at the top and the climbing was not any easier than the day before.  The change in vegetation from bottom to top was very apparent.  From herbs and grasses to scrub and back to herbs and flowers. The very top of the pass was a narrow notch between two large rocks.  When I arrived the path was fully blocked by a large bull.  After some talking to, the bull decided to move and let me pass, minutes later eric arrived and soon after junyang.  Junyang had regained his strength and speed, temporarily. After a short snack we started our 8hour decent.

 

To be continued...
 

DAY ELEVEN

100km? 3hours. Made it to Kang Ding(康定) today. Here to extend Casey's visa hopefully tomorrow. Tried to find a replacement speedometer cable with no luck. Looked at some fake old knives and tried to convince the shopkeeper of their fakeness. One denied it all the way... The other agreed but insisted the fakes were high quality replicas and the real ones were 10x more expensive. We should probably start recording time spent on repairs... Today two hours for a broken suspension bolt, chain guide and a bolt stripped out by the last 'mechanic'. Today might have been the first day that we weren't rained on. Net two Chinese guys riding from Cheng Du to Ihasa. Both had their 150cc bikes over loaded. One actually had a big backpack, enormous fanny pack, huge saddle bags, a big hard case and an oozing plastic wrapped blob of essential items riding on the back of the seat were a passenger might sit.

DAY TEN

230km, 7hours. 4400-4700m passes. Terrible road. Ruts it the pavement more like ditches. Passed 100 or more military trucks in convey on the one lane highway. In Ta Gong(塔公) now. Today was a bad China day. First no one would sell an empty cardboard box... then 90min at the post office trying to convince the postal worker from hell that my address is correct despite her opinion on the contrary, and finally numerous cars unnecessarily blaring horns as the pass us or not yielding as the pass and forcing us off the road.

DAY NINE

150km. 4hours. Speedometer and odeometer on both bikes now broken. Passed over 5000m plateau pass with amazing expanses of other worldly boulder fields strangely similar to joshua tree. In Li Tang(理塘) now...Supposedly one of the highest cities in the world at 4100m. Bought a sweet Tibetan cowboy hat.

DAY EIGHT

100km 7 hours. Went down a dirt road for 40km. Got stopped by the police for being foreigners. Turned off on a smaller dirt road and followed it up a mountain and to a village past the village the road turned to a path through the grass and wild flowers. Followed the path up another hill before finding its end at a summer grazing camp. Had some rice and mushrooms for lunch then were offered about 20lbs of mastutake and a few boletus. Bought the latter then left to explore another part of the grass land. Chain fell off and broke... 50km tow.

DAY SEVEN

12km. 1 hour. Still in Dao Cheng(稻城). Went for a morning ride with the boss then spent most of the afternoon dealing with electrical problems and another flat tire. Also roasted a whole Tibetan pig on a spit.

DAY SIX

225km 10hours. Flat tire, rain and hail make for delays. In Dao Cheng, Si Chuan Province now. Gorgeous here above tree line in alpine grasslands. Met a Chinese tokyo street racer who might take us fishing and to a hot spring tomorrow.

DAY FIVE

110km, 6 hours. Late start, way too many copper mine trucks, enormous ruts, lots of soupy sticky mud, pass at 4900m, bikes sputtering. Arrived in Lang Du(浪都) staying with local Tibetan family, answering lots of questionss about the U.S. I think we ate badger for dinner. It was delicious.

DAY FOUR

Flat tire in the morning... Rode double back to town to get it fixed. Also fixed the loose steering. Hopefully no more repairs. Off to Si Chuan Province tomorrow.

DAY THREE

287 km 9 hours mostly in the rain. Old blue dragon and thumper ran well all day. Beautiful scenery, down hill motor-less races, found some sweet off road. All wet day... Sweet burn outs on the flat and impossible hills. Rode through a huge mule bull horse market. On one section saw 5 cars in 3  hours, pretty impressive for China.

DAY TWO

Morning spent on dirt roads testing the off road abilities of the blue bike,here after referred to as old blue dragon. The red bike, thumper,arrived by truck this afternoon. Spent a couple hours at the repair shop fixing broken plastic, carbs, and the steering. After took a ride up a steep clay road in the rain... Way to slippery. Good to have two bikes now. Riding double is no fun. Off to shangri-la tomorrow.

DAY ONE

Midnight departure on sleeper bus from Kunming, 5:30am arrival in Xiaguan, bus transfer, 7am departure. 10am arrival in Lijiang. Found Chay's bike (awesome aussie let us borrow his bike) in storage nice and dusty.  Changed the plug, coil, and oil. Good to go. We were a bit worried about the bike after hearing some of its 5 year histroy, 3 years as a rental bike. Despite some broken plastic and several cosmetic parts attached with duct tape and wire, the bike is solid.  Bought a nobby tire and went riding double in the nearby countryside.  Got rained on and soaked.  Total KM 40ish. Not sure if the odometer is working properly. 
The other bike was delayed arriving in Lijiang. Hopefully it will tomorrow then after buying rain gear and an oil change we are off.

The Mouthes of Jason & Casey

Jason and Casey went for travelling with the whole body except for  their mouthes, me. The brain will deliver me the trip experiences. I will publish them here. I hope I can do a satisfied job.

Motorcycling Yunnan

Casey and I are leaving tonight on a 3-4week motorcycle trip around yunnan.   I arranged with a friend to post text messages of our progress and tribulations right here on the blog. Internet will be short, but feel free to call using skype, but best to send a skype text message 24h in advance so we can make sure to be stopped and have the phone on.  

(86) 13888 99 4715

Should be back in kunming sometime around Sept. 12th. 

Drivers Test

I got my chinese motorcycle and car license last week.  It cost about $12 and another $10 in cab fair to get there.  Some documents, a translation of my american license, and a computer test on rules and such was all that was required.  Oh, there was a health check..a rubber stamp affair.  Eyes good? Yes.  Stamp.  

Here are some questions.

1.1.1.11  驾驶人在   可以驾驶机动车。

A.饮酒后

B.患有妨碍安全驾驶的疾病

C.过度疲劳时

D.饮茶后

答案：D

1.1.1.11 The driver may drive a motorized vehicle __________________.

A. After drinking alcohol

B. When he suffers from a disease that impedes safe driving

            C. When he is exhausted

         D. After drinking tea

Answer:  D

3.1.2.1  驾驶摩托车，应穿着颜色鲜明的长袖及长裤服装，易被其他交通参与者发现。
答案：正确

3.1.2.1 A motorcycle driver should wear long-sleeve and long-trouser-leg clothes with brilliant color so that he can be easy found by other transports participants when he is riding.

              Answer: Right

3.1.2.2  穿高跟鞋驾驶摩托车，不利于安全行车。

答案：正确

3.1.2.2 It is unsafe to ride a motorcycle by high-heel shoes.

              Answer: Right 

3.4.1.27  行车中遇行为异常行人影响摩托车正常行驶时，应   。

A.提前减速慢行，必要时停车

B.鸣喇叭催其让路

C.从一侧加速绕过

D.开启前照灯警示

答案：A

3.4.1.27 When a pedestrian suffering behavioral disorder obstructs the normal flow of the vehicles on the road, the driver should ______.

A. Reduce speed in advance and go slowly, or stop when necessary

B. Honk to urge him to yield

C. Speed up and bypass from one side

D. Turn on the head light to warn him

Answer:  A

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I also got a motorcycle. A zongshen 150cc 2008.  

Tree and Mushroom Investigation

First of all.  The Great F1rewall of Ch1na is blocking key websites still.  While i believe my pictures on picasa (and this post) exist. I cant see them.  Nor can the rest of china.  I also dont like the layout of photobucket.  So here is yet again a new photo site, but dont look yet.

Pictures-Ipernity

and specifically the album for my last trip . Dimaluo-Yubeng (save the pictures for later!)

and a map. (you can look at the map)

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7pm departure from the spring city, $30 and 15 hours later I was in Fugong. The mode of transportation was a sleeper bus.  Sleeper buses are a great idea, you get to ride on a bus to all sorts places without train tracks and you get to sleep going there so you save on hotel costs, in theory.  Unfortunately, the beds on most sleeper buses are small and short, on this particular bus extra short. 1.5m at most. I am 1.83m.  That leaves about a foot of me that doesnt fit not to mention the narrowness of the bed.  Before arriving in Fugong, at approximately 6am I was awoken by a soldier roughly tapping on my head with is finger to wake me up.  I was not impressed.  After waking and mentioning in annoyed english that tapping a persons head is not a good way to wake them up, he began repeating 'passport' in chinese.  Now as i came to my senses and looked around, I was the only person being hassled.  This check point was only for foreigners and foreigners dont speak chinese. Passport would have been more appropriate. but instead i got head tapping and HUZHAO! HUZHAO!  After producing the document for the soldier, he took it and turned and left.  I called out immediately and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing running off with my passport without telling me what he was doing.  as i said this english, he didnt understand, and just ignored me and continued walking away.. I jumped out of my bed and pursued him to the check point.  About 15min later they figured out how to read enough of my passport to register my crossing and my passport was returned to me and i thanked them for the warm welcome.

Arriving in Fugong, a quick lunch of covered rice(盖饭）was in order.  Covered rice is the cheapest meal to be had here in china.  aside from a bowl of noodles or fried rice that is.  About 1USD gets you a big bowl of rice (more in quantity, but not calories, than you are used to eating) and 5ish topping dishes.  On this particular day I had pork and pickled vegetables, twice cooked pork, corn and beans, and egg and tomato.  Everything gets humped real high on the rice bowl and you dig in with the sticks. 5mins to consume the lot and feel stuffed. 3hours and $4 later we were in gongshan.  quick transfer to mini bread loaf van, 1 hour and $2 later we were in the booming frontier town of Bingzhongluo 丙中洛. Actually not on the frontier, but pretty close to t1bet, about 50km.  Stepping out of the car we began asking shop keepers if we could leave our bags with them and eventually were directed to a small hotel that allowed us to leave our bags in their bedroom for free.  

The plan for the day was to walk 20km to the nearby village of something or another and spend the night. Returning the following day to retrieve our bags meet our parties third and walk to a different village before beginning our hike proper the following morning.  we walked about 30min on a twisty road through corn fields and a village or two before being hailed by 6 young chinese guys sitting under a tree.  they appeared to be drinking a local corn liquor and upon accepting their hails and sitting down i quickly learned what the local liquor was all about.  tasting something like nail polish remover and estimated by our new to be about 40% alcohol. I didnt plan on drinking much, but after refusing the 3rd, 5th, and 6th glass my will waned. I ended up very drunk and eating dinner with our new friends.  One was a local gov offical, one a local cop, and the others friends from childhood and hired as contractors for the hydro powerplant the local government was building. 

Hydro powerplants were frequent on the Salween River.  All following a similar design.  They were not dams.  They were placed along a tributary to the river.  Up stream in the tributary a 2ft pipe was placed to collect part of the tributary's water( much less than half).  The pipe then follows a near level path out of the tributary canyon and upon reaching a place almost to the Salween canyon, drops almost vertically for several hundred feet before entering the turbines.  The water then exits the turbines and enters directly into river.  I dont know to much about their impact, but I cant see the hydro plant have a large negative impact, especially nothing like a dam. 

After dinner our new friends gave us a ride for the remain 15km or so. Once we got to the village and our guest house i spotted a ladder than needed climbing. I immediately ascended and found myself on the flat sub-roof of the family's house under the eaves. I felt suddenly tired and decided to lay down on the roof announcing that i planned to sleep there. I was eventually convinced to descend the ladder, not an easy task.  After a awkward hug-slide dismount i found my bed and promptly passed out at 7pm.  I awoke the next morning at 4am with my travel buddy talking to me.  Apparently he thought i was awake and thought he saw my eyes open in the 4am darkness. 

I should probably introduce the rest of the group.  The guy talking to me at 4am and continuing to talk to me until the end of the trip is named Junyang.  He is a chinese PHD marketing student that happens to play frisbee with the kunming team.  He is also very chatty and full of questions about everything especially the US and americans. He asks lots of questions.  Sort of like an annoying 8 year old. Why is the sky blue?  How many girlfriends have you had? how many to most americans have?  do you really eat beef everyday? The questions were relentless and I was hungover and trapped in bed. 

I eventually made it out of bed and was able to see a bit of the village in the rain.  About 11 we started walking back to Bingzhongluo.  Supposedly we would get picked up on the road and would only have to walk 30min or so. 3h later we arrived in Bingzhongluo without a single car passing.  I was not a happy camper. On the way we passed a cow. It was not a particularly healthy cow as its ribs were clearly visible.  Seeing it and its ribs made me think of ribs and BBQ.  I tried to explain BBQ and BBQ sauce to Junyang with no success. After trying to explain bbq sauce as tomato based with some spices sugar and vinegar and american style grilling, the best conception we had was Chinese bbq with hot chilies flakes and ketchup.  Another hour bus ride to some bridge and we met up with our third tongzhi, eric.  Two hours walking on a dirt road and we arrived in DImaluo. 

On the way there I began to notice the numerous roads scarring the steep canyon walls.  Many of the roads were new or even under construction leaving large swathes of land above and below the road scarred by landslides.  The roads reminded me of logging roads in the US national forests. Logging roads contrarily were built only to be used for a few months and in the best case to be returned back to nature after logging is finished.  Either way, carving roads out of steep unstable slopes leads to landslides and scarring.  Once we hike over to the Mekong river basin, the evidence and impact of road building would become even more apparent and severe. 

In Dimaluo we stayed at the only guest house in town. A'luo's Guesthouse and guiding service.  The famous A'luo was not present, but his wife, wife's sister (who didnt look related) and two children of ambiguous decent. The guesthouse was actually A'luo's wooden house with a large multipurpose meeting room, several dorm rooms, a kitchen and dining room with a TV.  There were also rooms for the family.  In the multipurpose room the walls were lined with bilingual posters about hiking, tourism, environmental protection, and people in area.  It was all very well written and contained very surprising content. Topics like leave no trace, cultural sensitivity, and an explanation about trash along the trail and in nature from a local perspective was given.  Basically, there is no trash service in the area, nothing to do with trash but heap it up and little incentive for the locals it pick up scattered pieces of trash.  Basically there is not a high value on trash free environs. Despite the info and the guest house actually being the families house, the place had a distinct rundown look.  There were dust and piles of  long forgotten things everywhere.  

To be continued.....

Editing

I have been correcting super stimulating essays on various aspects of wood production.  

Here are some exerpts and my corrections:

Original: At first, the size and the position of defects are determined in order to extract some characteristics. These characteristics make up characteristic data. So pattern recognition is finished.

Corrected: First, the size and the position of defects are determined in order to extract characteristic data.

Original: Acoustic emission can be defined as a physical phenomenon that objects or materials gives birth to a kind of instantaneous elasticity waves when it releases energy. And AE signal is a kind of electricity signal, which is processed by the system and then comes forth as a kind of form, after one or more AE events are received by sensors.

Corrected:Acoustic emission(AE) is defined as the physical phenomenon that objects produce a kind of instantaneous elasticity wave when releasing energy.

Original:There are many methods that can be served as the methods of non-destructive testing of wood, but AE technique is the only method to detect dynamically the physical conditions according to the character of AE technique.

 

Corrected:There are many non-destructive wood testing methods, but the AE technique is the only method that can dynamically detect the physical characteristics of the wood. (If the other methods are not detecting the physical characteristics are they detecting the spiritual? the abstract?  A correct sentence, but still lacking meaning)

 

Original:In this topic the study about nondestructive log detection image collection and processing system is important work, because we not only make use of practical condition to construct nondestructive log detection image processing experimental circumstance, but also require all the practical experiences of nondestructive log detection automatic system, it includes hardware and software experience

Corrected: delete

Original:Preparations. Firstly, make the tested timber stand 1 or 2 meters away from computer and Arbotom testing apparatus, fix it and make sure it no shake, then take pins to averagely distribute on the circumference of timber, keep the pins on one level, and avoid crack and node when hitting the pins, and make sure the pins enter into log and fix it, then hang sensors on the pins orderly, keep sensor and pin perpendicularity, and then connect the sensors orderly using the sensor cables, and then connect computer and Arbotom testing apparatus, and connect Arbotom testing apparatus and first sensor, finally turn on computer, open Arbotom software and set relevant parameters, and turn on Arbotom testing apparatus, checkout whether all connections are correct (When then sensor chain is connected correctly, all sensors except the last one will show a green LED when the battery pack is switched on. 

Corrected: where to start...

Original: The wood with hole at location is studied.

Corrected: holey wood on location? in the forest?  wood with holes drilled at specified locations?

Original: Influence of medium order to reduce the variation caused by testing material, heartwood is used as wood sample. 

Corrected:To limit variation introduced by the medium, only heartwood was used in samples.

Original: On the condition of nondestructive appearance and structure of log, testing internal defects of log correctly is an effective method to utilize log, and it is significant for selecting log scientifically. 

Corrected: Nondestructive testing can be used to effectively utilize logs while maintaining their appearance and structure. 

ugh.

Special note: science can be used as an adjective and adverb in chinese.  It is so much fun too.  if you are talking about a program or project you can describe it as very science, meaning logical, well thought out, and legitimate.

Updates

First of all, blogger is still blocked and posting is a difficult affair, but I will put an update up in the near future. 

For now, pictures!  A new picture scheme.  Artsy pics go on Flickr .  Documentary stuff goes on Photobucket.  There is still some stuff on picasa, but i cant see it anymore so nothing new there. 

There is new stuff on both flickr and photobucket now.

Updates:

After Thailand I went to shangri-la in NW yunnan for a week long conference on sustainable land management.

Then there were two weeks back in kunming, finishing up at the forestry university, correcting obscene amounts of very very poor scientific papers about wood defect detection and land use change risk analysis, and studying for the second half of the GRE. 

Then there was the shanghai ultimate tournament.

Then two weeks house/puppying sitting at a friend's hutong place in beijing.

Then a week on the beach in weihai to celebrate the 4th. 

And now back here for a while.  Just started interning/ working for free at an NGO here doing more forestry research and preping for a conference next year. 

I made a pair of running sandals yesterday using some rubber sole material and some hemp rope. The fit and feel great.  I will wear them around for a week or so and see what they can do.  Then it will be down to the shoe repair wholesale market to find better sole material and maybe some leather laces for the second pair.

I made beer this week too.  A friend and i persuaded a local restaurant to sell us some malted barely and hops...we then spend 5 hours roasting barely to make our dark beer. Another 3 or so grinding it in a blender.  Jerry rigged a mashing/ sparging tub and then brewed away.  It is happily bubbling away as we speak. I predict drinking in early aug. 

Starting to think and plan a cross china motorcycle trip for late aug and sept.  Plan is to buy a chinese 125cc bike and a good helmet and go off to see the countryside.  As plans develop updates to come.

Getting pretty homesick for certain things. Hiking, the great outdoors, friends, social community, the ease of getting around and getting things done, and maybe pizza. 

Starting to apply for jobs/ internships for this fall.  In china, abroad, and in the US.  If you have any ideas let me know.  Also applying for stuff starting in Jan 2010.  

And of course starting to think about grad school and applying this fall for fall 2010.

The Great F1rewall

China has started blocking blogger/blogspot again. Posting has been difficult and remains so. I need to find some more tricky ways around the great f1rewall.

Recently I have been away on vacation in Thailand and then at a week-long conference in Shangri-la in NW yunnan. Both were amazing.

pictures - http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/Thailand

Steak House

So I went to a steak house tonight. Knife Fork and Season. It wasnt quite a steak house, but a place that served thin pan fried beef and strange lookalike western food. It was quite good, but not like the steak I know. I tried to explain was an inch thick pan sized montana grass fed steak was like, but i dont know if it got across. As i was explaining how big a real steak was, i got the impression that I was telling a fish story...I dont know if the chinese i was with believed me. Either that or a big steak is just a bit too excessive to accept. Nonetheless still delicious.
steak
wine cooler
menu

The building the steakhouse was located in was quite impressive. Despite being a half hour from our apt on the way out of town. The area was still colonized by enormous shopping centers and apartment complex. Sprawl at its best. The only difference is this peripheral suburb has no public transit, no bikes, and few peds. just private cars. american style.

The shopping center itself was six stories, but the space was not entirely filled. At least two football fields worth of space was just an enclosed space with 6 stories of empty space. only along the back wall were there actual stories and shops. I asked why there was so much empty space and the reply was..."for flying remote control helicopters" (you can imagine how frustrating responses like this are...) Either way it was a monstrosity.

Also interesting were the enormous apartment buildings near this enormous shopping building. They were said to house 20,000 families. about 60k. This is just one such development here. The scale and shear number of people is stifling. Also interesting is the number of apts that were sold but unoccupied. Real estate investment is huge here. The apts there a year ago when they were completed sold for 250US/m2 and they all sold immediately. Now, one year later, they sell for $725. Tidy profit in one year.

Updates

I haven't been updating much lately. Life is nonetheless good.
If anything I have been taking more pictures that before and breaking in the new camera. Flickr is getting all the new ones.

The barely sprouting worked! Found the wholesale grain market and bought a bunch of barely along with some other grains and beans. Sprouted 1kg more worth of barely, but unfortunately left for the weekend and came back to the barely well over-sprouted. Dried it, roasted it, cracked it, and made a test batch of barely wine with it. The wine is currently fermenting and smells great!

For the weekend I went to Dali with a big group of people for an expenses paid weekend and rock concert. The concert was lame, but we climbed a nearby peak on one of the days. A bit cold, and steep, but lots of fun.

The following week we the closest tallest mountain around kunming early one morning to get a vantage point. I was a bit disappointed. There was too much smog to see much at all, even at 9am. Kunming gets good air quality ratings compared to other chinese cities, but as i mentioned before the Chinese air quality scale is much more lenient that the US scale, so even our regular green scores turn out to be worse than LA. Fun kunming pano.

I gave a presentation on the US economic crisis and the US government's response to the crisis this week. The audience was a masters level class on investment economics. The prof had me give it in english, but I think only a few students understood most of it and no one got it all. In the followup class today we had an extensive question and answer session mostly in chinese to clarify. Next week members of the class will report on region effects of the crisis in china.

Last weekend I went to a nearby city with the rest of the international students from the forestry university. 1 canadian(born in hong kong of chinese decent), 1 dutch, 2 thais, 25 vietnamese, and me. The city turned out to be yet another tourist city all fake and built in the last several years just for tourists. We got to 'learn and experience' yi minority culture and food. I got married to an yi lady as part of the dinner show only because i am white. It was fun though. We also got to attend a cherry festival a bit outside the city. The cherry festival saved the weekend. Not quite like flathead rainier's or bings, but delicious all the same. By my best assessment of cherry eating speed, cherry pit refuse, and minor bloating, I consumed 3kg that day and another 1kg on the following. We participated in a cherry eating contest. At which two of the vietnamese students got 1st and 2nd place and received 5kg of cherries as a prize. Being white, I received an honorable mention and 1kg.

Kunming

Things have been getting started a bit slower here in Kunming than I had originally hoped for, but it is understandable. I have to reestablish trust and relationships and that takes time. I might have crossed the threshold this week and next weeks should pick up.

Over a month ago now my camera was stolen out of my pocket on a bus. With the camera gone I sort of lost my motivation to keep up on the blog. Well I have a new camera now. I also am trying out a new photo website. We will see how it goes.

I have started an herb garden, banana wine, spiced mead, and am currently trying to sprout wheat and barely. If the sprouting works, I will find a grinding apparatus, construct a solar oven and make some sprout bread. Tomorrow morning we are going in search of a wholesale grain and oil market.

Photos

Forest Visit

About two weeks ago I was able to go on another reforestation forest visit. After several hours of meeting with professors at my new university and some interesting conversations, one of the professors invited me to lunch with his assistant, but not him. After a delicious and gut filling lunch of roast duck, several other meats, and sour yunnan red rose wine, the assistant informed me that we would be leaving for a field visit in 30min and I could return to the office with him if i wanted a short nap. This was all news to me and the nap was quite appealing as I already felt the food coma and red wine setting in.

I actually tried to talk him out of the field visit. I was not a good enough reason to have an impromptu field visit. After a little bit of attempted convincing I got the idea that the field visit might be a good excuse for the professor and assistant to take the afternoon off for a countryside drive. I didnt go for a nap, instead went back with one of the professors masters students to his dorm and chatted with him and his three roommates for a bit before leaving for the neighboring county.

Once we arrived in the county seat, we stopped at the forestry bureau office and picked up two guys to be our local tour guides. After another 30min of driving we stopped at the township forestry office for a short chat. I wasnt exactly prepared for this impromptu feild visit, but I did my best to ask lots of questions and take copious notes about the sloping land conversion program status in the area. I was unable to understand the chinese of the township forestry official or that of one of the county officials, but the professor was able to provide a translation to more standard chinese when needed. I say more standard because his chinese is very reflective of his home province of guizhou, but much more standard than the others.

After our short question and answer session we got back in the car and continued up the valley to see some actual reforestation/sloping land conversion sites and to ask more questions. The entire area was using bamboo for its reforestation purposes. The natural forest is not a bamboo forest, but instead a mixed decidious forest. The bamboo, however, is much more beneficial for the farmers. They get to be subsidized for 8 years while also get to start bamboo harvesting in year 3-5. Income from the sale of bamboo is rougly 3x what the farmers could make growing potatos or grain on the same land. When the program first began in 2000 farmers were very resistant to participation, but after a few years and apparent concrete earnings of the more bold farmers, everyone jumped on. Now even on flat land some farmers have planted bamboo without subsidy incentive. That being said there still are some sloping lands highly prone to erosion that remain unconverted either do to farmer resistance of relatively high subsidy adminstration costs for very small plots.

Sloping Land Conversion-SongMing, Yunnan

New Address

Jason Clark
Jin Li Yuan 914-1-302
Pan Long Qu
Kunming, Yunnan 65000
China
(86)13888994715

New pictures!!!

Nature
Beijing
Scenes
Food

Winter break

I think we have been everywhere. In about 5 weeks time we have been to beijing, kunming, xishuangbanna in southern yunnan, xi'an, southern shaanxi, hua shan, guangzhou, guilin, yanshou, nanning, changsha, nw hunan, and back to kunming today. We have been lost in the chinese countryside amidst rice terraces, bicycling through banana groves, climbing fig trees, exploring psychedelic technicolor caves, climbing taoist mountains, celebrating the chinese spring festival the traditional way, in the countryside with a big chinese family, drinking too much baijiu (the white chinese liquor, about 52%), eats lots of great food, bamboo rafting, walking on city walls, playing with chinese fireworks( legit fireworks, none of that weak stuff you get in the US...when they go boom you feel it and it sets off nearby car alarms).

Our time in southern yunnan was great. we took local buses on windy dirt roads (windy enough to cause havoc for those with weak stomachs). After three transfers we ended up in a place called yuanyang 元阳。 the place is famous for its rice terraces. from the top of the mountains you can look down the slopes at endless expanses of mirror like rice fields. all reflecting the sunlight and the nearby landscape. we started wondering from one town, intending on coming back in the afternoon for a late lunch. whilst wondering a friendly local hanyi guy started talking with us. i was surprised because most of the people in the area are minorities(hanyi and bai) and do not speak mandarin. this guy had worked as a migrant laborer for 6 years all over southern china starting when he was 15, and had learned decent mandarin. we talked and walked, and he offered to show us the way back to his village for lunch. lunch in his village was great..although his time estimates how how long it would take to get there were about 2 hours off.. we had lunch with him, his niece, and his pig (the pig was enormous and only had a few weeks left to live before being slaughtered for the spring festival). we ended up walking on the terraces themselves..or rather on thin strips of earth separating the terraces for the entire day. we arrived at another town some unknown number of kilometers away just before dusk. we caught a local minivan bus back to the main town. on the way back we met an enormous traffic jam on the one lane dirt hillside road. Three large logging trucks had met some smaller delivery trucks at an unfortunately narrow section of road. rather than backing up to a wider spot, the trucks attempted to squeeze by at snail pace, while cars began to back up behind them. by they time they decided they couldnt squeeze past, there were a good twenty cars and trucks backed up in both ways... new dilemma...how to organize 40 cars to all back up to wide spots in the road to let the logging trucks by... they whole thing took about 2 hours to resolve.

we caught a couple more local buses and made our way back to a a bigger city where we bought tickets for a 15hour sleeper bus to jinghong 景洪。 strange enough the distance for the sleeper bus was the same as a 10 hour bus from kunming to jinghong.. we spent about 6 hours on a narrow winding road driving 20-40km/h before finally getting on the main highway south. we didnt mind the slow driving or the extra time though. we got bunks on the upper level right at the front and had a great view out the enormous windshield and side windows. the sleeper bus did have a problem. the bunks...there were more like recliners that reclined back to 45 degrees which is fine, except they were convex, hard and caused great discomfort for us. others riding the bus were able to curl up on the 3ft flat portion to sleep. not really an option for those over 5ft tall...

in jinghong we spent some time bicycling the countryside, through local dai villages, in and around banana groves, through numerous fields, and some rubber plantations. it was pretty great overall and we found an enormous spider. we took a trip to china's largest botanical garden, and did some more biking around a dai minority park...which turned out to be a normal dai village with a fence around it and an admission price.

we made it back to kunming for the beginning of the spring festival. we made a large feast of pork roast, roasted potatoes and garlic, squash bisque, salad, and stir fried pressed rice squares which was all delicious. the fireworks that night were amazing. large mortars all over the place and the firecrackers didnt stop all night. at one point we were surrounded by at least 4 different strings of the loudest firecrackers i have ever heard. even with my fingers jammed in my ears the noise was immense, but even more impressive were the shock waves felt all over my body. whilst in kunming, we bought a pair of amazing chinese bikes.. paid 17 dollars for the pair and got one bell and two locks thrown in for free. We rode them for the 5 days were there and they are waiting for our return this week.

from kunming we trained to guiyang for a day stopover before flying to xi'an. in guiyang i saw one of the most depressing zoos. there were lots of different animals all in square featureless concrete cages. one of the more depressing portions was a small bird cage with two owls in it. there were two little boys with sticks poking the owls for who knows how long. all the while hundreds of chinese walked by and enjoyed seeing the different animals, but never commenting on the squalid conditions or scolding the little boys.

In xi'an we first went to song lailong's (jonah's) house to grab some snacks before leaving for his father's family's ancestral home in southern shaanxi, hanzhong 汉中。 the city is a famous historical city in china during the three kingdoms period(3rd century). we stayed at a hotel in hanzhong, but everyday went to a different relative's house in in the countryside for lunch and dinner. the 4 days spent in hanzhong are unforgettable. everyone was very friendly, but more than anything it was apparent they were all happy to back together as a family for the holiday. each day there was 20 or so people present and we all crowed around little folding tables to eat delicious selections of meats and vegetables. also at each meal there were several bottles of the 52% baijiu. the males of the family all set together and drank baijiu, while the women and children sat together and escaped drinking the fire water.

back in xi'an we wondered the streets, caught a light statue exhibition on the city wall, eat some great street food, and took a two day trip to climb the nearby huashan. hua shan was a 1500m accent all on concrete steps. the guide book and the ticket office said it should take between 5 and seven hours to complete the climb, we did it a little faster at 2.5. once the sun set we saw a brilliant array of stars(stars are virtually nonexistent in chinese cities due to light pollution and constant haze). we awoke at 6 the next morning and made a 30min hike the the east peak of the mountain to catch sunrise over the peaks in the distance and the cloud sea beneath us. it was pretty amazing, aside from the chinese tourists...especially the dude who thought it was ok to pee on top of the rock we were sitting against... unbelievable. there is a very different view of nature here.

from xi'an we caught a plan to guangzhou, then transfered and flew to guilin were we met up with two classmates from the states. we took a bamboo raft down the river to yangshou where we took an epic 60k bike ride through the country side, and had an interesting tandem bike race. yangshou itself was rather repulsive due to the number of tourists and touts trying to sell guide services, goods, and tricks. the surrounds were very pleasant. slowly meandering rivers surrounded by the strange and famous karst hills seen in chinese painting.

this weekend i am in nanning to meet with some forestry folks. next week on the road again in yunnan for the last bit of winter travel. then in kunming apartment hunting before heading off to hong kong the first week of march for a conference.

pictures to come in a week.

Trains and First Forest Visit

I got up at 5:00 on friday to go stand in a line to buy train tickets. The office opened at 6:30 but when I arrived around 5:30 there was already a long line outside in the dark and delightfully chilly air. A little over three hours later I made it inside the building. A little later I was talking to a law student and mentioned which tickets I wanted to buy. He informed me I needed to come back the next day, as they hadn’t gone on sale…Bad news or rather extra queuing practice. So five days in advance in china, actually means 4 days in advance because the day of the actual train accounts as 1 day in advance.

I talked to one of my friends about my queueing practice run and he suggested that I go to a different university to get the tickets as there would be a shorter line. The next morning I did the same 5am routine. The 5:30 queue consisted of me, and only me at this other university. I was worried, how could there be a 3+hour line at one university and none at the other. Was I in the wrong place? Was I dreaming in bed still? 6:15 another person arrives…and by 6:30 there were almost ten. Still nothing compared to the hundreds I stood with the previous morning. By 7am I had my ticket in my hand.

By 7:30am I was on a bus to who knows where to go skiing with a Chinese tour group. I was a nice ride despite the leaky window I sat next to and the amount of ice that accumulated on the inside of my window. We arrived around 11am and were told to walk around until lunch at 1230. Not entirely sure why we left at 730 only to arrive and walk around for an hour and a half. We found a nice hill and did some sledding on a piece of wood and a scrap of cardboard. Lunch was mediocre and by 2:30 we were actually at the bottom of the ski hill getting rental gear and lift tickets. We got two hour lift tickets, which I was a bit surprised at.

The ski resort/ company provided everything and basically assumed that people would come not knowing how to ski. Lift tickets and ski rentals were package deals with a 30% discount if you had your own equipment. Almost everyone there was renting. You basically show up on a tour bus, pay some money, get a lift ticket, boots and skis and then hit the slope. The slope because there is not more than one. There were actually two types of lift ticket: the standard ticket and the advanced ticket in addition to different time durations ranging from several days to 2 hours. The slope was divided into two sections. Everyone used the same lift to access the lower slope, while those with advanced tickets took a second lift to the upper half. None was it was very steep and all of it was icy. Which made for poor skiing. Not to mention the numbers of Chinese people strewn across the slopes in a wreckage of bodies, skis and poles. It was more like an ice obstacle course. There were an amazing number of sky patrol/ski instructors to actually act as drag to help beginners go down very very slow. There were mostly beginners. It was fun, but nothing like skiing in the states.

We got back on the bus at 430 and were back in town at 800. Time for some hot pot and then to bed.

The next morning I got early and went to the clothing market to get some pants repaired. I got back just about 930 when I got a call from my professor. “Are you free today? Can you go to the forest plantation?” “sure”. At 10 I was standing in another train ticket line. This one was only an hour and half. At 4 I was on a 6 hour train to northern Heilongjiang with a standing ticket. A standing ticket affords you permission to stand in the seating car wherever there is space, mostly in the aisle. The train was packed. In our car alone there were at least 50 people standing. Maximum capacity, schmaximum capacity. Every time the food cart came through was a disaster as we all scrambled to sit laps and squeeze out of the way. About 3 hours into the journey enough people got off that I was able to steal a seat.

When we got into town we walked about 100feet to the first hotel and got a room. About an hour later the police came and asked what we were doing. After a quick explanation that we were from the forestry university and were coming to visit the forest bureau, they were off and we were asleep. The next morning we had some excellent wild vegetable baozi dumplings before being visited by a different portion of the police department. This time was still about me, the foreigner, but they had to come to collect the hotel registration information, which the hotel staff had forgotten to collect = fine of 200rmb ($30).

We reported to the forestry bureau at 8:30 and were promptly offered cigarettes by the minister of timber production. First we went to see the log distribution yard. All of the logs coming out of the forest are dropped at the yard where they are sorted according to species and length before going on the saw mill. The whole operation was very low tech. A bunch of guys with log moving sticks, and some rudimentary cranes. Next we went to the forest plantation office were we were again offered cigarettes and tea. After drinking some tea we got back in the car and drove to a portion of the natural forest currently being logged. It was all selective cutting based on size. The forest itself was fairly sparse and consisted of mostly young scrawny trees. The cutting was done with chainsaws, but that was the only machine involved. Draft horses and sledges were employed to drag the logs out of the forest and back to the main road. At this particular site there were four horse drivers and two chainsaw operators. They actually lived at the site in something resembling a shepard’s tent, but made out of plastic sheeting. Their beds were made of small round stave crude platforms. They live at the site for about three months at a time and make between 600 and 900 rmb a month. About $3 a day.

After the forest we went back to the plantation office for lunch, baijiu (white Chinese liquor about 50%) and some drunken talk about timber production. At 3 we were back on a train for Harbin.

Forest Trip Pictures

In other news I gave up our apartment today and am taking a train to Beijing. Will be on the road for about two months. Come March will hopefully be setup and living in Yunnan.

Ice Festival Pictures

Check out this motorcycle. It is complete with its own coal stove for internal heating.

The Adventure Begins...

I am actually going to a forest soon. Probably Monday. Its pretty exciting. Sort of a two day field trip to have a looky-look.

Had a four hour lunch at a sea fish restaurant without actually eating any sea fish. There was a river/fish farm fish head and some shellfish involved though. It was a jolly end of the year welcome in the new year celebration for some of the research students one of my supervisors and Casey and I. We also had mead.

Next week begins another phase of this forest adventure (aside from the actual forest trip). I will be heading down to Beijing to meet with some people about forest stuff in China. Then a few days later heading to Kunming, Yunnan to do the same. The plan is to make some contacts and make some plans for next semester. After Kunming and Yunnan we will go to Xi'an to spend some time with my ex-roommate and his family and then back to the south to meet some friends in Guangzhou. Here is a map with some approximate dates.