Chinese Forest Adventure

New Cell Number

2009-10-18T15:06:00.001+08:00

+86 1528 456 2047

New address

2009-10-16T09:12:00.001+08:00

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

2009-10-03T14:35:00.003+08:00

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

2009-09-15T14:35:00.001+08:00

We are back and done with the trip.

Photos here

enjoy

DAY TWENTYONE

2009-09-11T22:45:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-08T23:49:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-08T23:45:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-07T11:59:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-06T00:16:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-05T00:48:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-04T07:41:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-02T23:00:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-02T14:09:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-01T15:10:00.001+08:00

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

2009-09-01T15:03:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-31T18:57:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-31T11:32:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-31T10:45:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-28T23:12:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-28T23:08:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-28T23:03:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-26T23:32:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-24T22:47:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-24T12:28:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-22T23:40:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-22T13:43:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-21T08:44:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-20T17:15:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-19T19:17:00.001+08:00

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

2009-08-19T19:14:00.002+08:00

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

2009-08-19T19:10:00.001+08:00

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)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

2009-07-17T17:10:00.001+08:00

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

2009-07-17T16:09:00.001+08:00

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

2009-05-31T13:13:00.000+08:00

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

2009-04-25T22:51:00.002+08:00

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

2009-04-23T20:57:00.003+08:00

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

2009-04-04T00:05:00.002+08:00

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

2009-04-03T23:44:00.002+08:00

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

2009-03-10T10:10:00.003+08:00

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

New pictures!!!

2009-03-10T09:42:00.001+08:00

Nature
Beijing
Scenes
Food

Winter break

2009-02-16T12:52:00.002+08:00

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

2009-01-07T12:42:00.002+08:00

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...

2009-01-01T11:34:00.003+08:00

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.

english class

2008-12-19T13:41:00.002+08:00

I had a dream last night. It was rather depressing. I dreamt that I woke up and checked the weather. That’s was it. It had warmed up, above freezing for the next two weeks at least. Warm front. I should be celebrating right? Wrong. Warm temperatures mean no ice snow or ice snow festival. Possibly one of the few redeeming aspects of Ha’erbin (I say possibly because I haven’t seen it yet). In the dream, I was devastated. I had bore over half a year of Ha’erbin life just waiting for this ice snow festival. How could the weather gods do this to me. I needed to get cold fast and stay that way. Turns out it was a dream. We have nice cold temperatures in the forecast. Today there are even 40mph wind gusts and snow! Might even call it a blizzard. It is pretty. I’m dreaming of a white china-mas.

I sat in on a two hour graduate level English class this week. Graduate level doesn’t mean the students are really good at English. In fact most cant speak a sentence. Graduate means they are graduate students. The way the class was taught made Chinese English abilities much easier to understand. This obviously doesn’t go for everyone, but at least for some of the younger generations in higher education. Many of these students can read and write English fairly well. Some well enough to get higher scores than me on some standardized test, like the GRE. Unfortunately few can speak fluid sentences or hold a conversation. Its not their fault. They just haven’t really practiced oral English, or had an opportunity to practice. This graduate English class made that clear. The class consisted of the teacher reading the text in English out loud. Then translating it into Chinese sentence by sentence, or calling on a student to translate it. So the students contact with English was simply reading by themselves and hearing their teacher read it. They didn’t actually say the English words or even have to try and understand them because the teacher or one of the students from the front of the class gave them the translation immediately after the English. Out of the 50 or so in the class, about 5 had to translate sentences and they were all in the first 2 of 10 rows. Pretty low chance of being called on, especially in the back. The story of the day was about a male ballot (pronounced like voting ballot) dancer and his cocaine overdose. A rather inappropriate and out of place story, I thought. Drugs are nowhere near a national topic here. There seldom spoken about and no one has done them or knows what they are. The translation for cocaine was simply ‘drug’ and snorting cocaine was simply ‘do drugs’.

Yummy things consumed this week.

煎饼果子,jian bing guozi, pretty common and eaten quite often by me. Consists of a very thin pancake made from only flour and water on a 2ft diameter iron griddle. Filled with fried egg, hot chili, cilantro, onions, hotdogs bits, hashbrowns and some fried bread chips. Delicious.

烤地瓜 roast whole sweet potato. Need not mention more. Served out of oil drum roaster.

包子 steamed buns filled with sauerkraut.

春饼 spring rolls, although not the deep fried things. These are Chinese burritos. Plate size thin pancakes again made from watery flour mixture. Then filled with an assortment of stirfry dishes like carrots and beef, sweet hot pork, tree ear fungus and egg.

I sent off a whole bundle of holiday cards last week. They should be arriving at various locations within three weeks time! If you have reason to believe you will not receive a card (ie I don’t have your address) send it to me and I will mail you a postcard during our little epic adventure coming up in Jan, feb, and march.

Attention Zhuhai!

珠海珠海！你是一个经常读者。我不想让你害怕了，但是如果您想，请给我发送一个电子邮件，让我知道你是谁。

Housing

2008-12-15T07:32:00.002+08:00

Interesting contrast or inconsistency. When you think of china what do you think? Over 4000 years of civilized history?

Independent inventor of rice cultivation, black powder, printing blocks, paper, the compass, or shark fin soup? How about traditional buildings like the forbidden palace or Buddhist monasteries and Taoist or Confucius temples? Those things are all here. There are also scores of new buildings, temporary buildings, modern short lived buildings. The modern buildings outnumber the old by far. This last week I was talking about houses with some people and the issue of age came up. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the age of buildings or the role age played in the quality of buildings.
When a building was built plays a big role in the quality of the building and quality of the apartments within. Not only because building materials are better or more modern in newer buildings, but mostly because the wiring, plumbing, walls, doors, windows, and floors get old and degrade. When talking about the apartment you live in you definitely know in what year it was built and most people seems to have a pretty good idea what your apartment is like just from that. This is all pretty standard stuff. In the US it is about the same. You know a house built in the 70’s or 90’s is a bit different and when remodeling might be needed. The thing that is different here ~ the time scales… An apartment from ’98 is old. Not only is it old, it probably needs renovation and remodeling. The plumbing has probably rusted, the floors are not flat, and the walls might be cracking, molding, or slowly (quickly?) crumbling, and the windows definitely leak. This isn’t to mention that painting isn’t common here. Instead whitewashing is, and in high traffic areas like the university classrooms, it is a yearly process. I am not saying that everything 10 years old is falling down, but the perspective I got last week, was places 10 years old are not good, and you should probably find someplace newer.
Most of the buildings here have been built in the last 20 years, if not the last 15 or 10. China is reportedly to add millions of square meters of residential space every year. Every this relatively new, even though it may not appear that way. Buildings really do age quickly here. Probably do to a different maintenance paradigm, no maintenance in some cases.
On campus there were some one-story brick row houses on campus. That was at least until last week. Now there is one little row house. The rest were destroyed by a large front-end loader and carried off in a dump truck. The remaining house bears the scar of its neighbors on its east wall. The fate of the row houses has been long foreseen. They used to stand amongst a towering forest of 6-7 story apartments buildings providing housing to the university staff and faculty. The row houses were out of place and taking up valuable apartment building space. The last row house still stands because the inhabitant doesn’t want to move out and the university can’t force them out. So there is currently a standoff. Who knows how long it will last.
A similar process is also going on behind the university campus. What was farmland last week, is now being turned, compacted and prepared for construction of an expansion for the university. The fields were surrounded on all sides of apartment complexes and 6 lane roads; definitely out of place and again the eventual destruction/construction a long foreseen result. Development is a big force and consumes…

Big picture update:
Tiger Park (story)
Scenes
Nature
Strange

Generally any album with a recent date has new pictures.

Snippets from the last week or so…

2008-12-11T10:09:00.003+08:00

Walking on campus the other day I noticed an elderly man sauntering towards me on the icy road. He had a big grin on his face visible even from far away. As he approached I noticed he was wearing a very stylish black leather ball cap (very popular among the elder males). Not only was the hat stylish it bore the brand “Homy” in big silver metal letters.

There are a few things are a bit hard to understand here. I will pick one for now. Polished marble floors. Many of the buildings on campus and in the city have shiny polished marble floors. They are even washed every night so they are bright and shiny for the next day. I think it is fine that companies want to up their image with fancy rocks. Unfortunately if you add a little water, snow, ice, or slush to a polished marble floor they become slick as ice, which is the exact state of the floors here for the duration of winter. It is quite amusing, although not terribly convenient. Indoor ice rinks are fun, but I suppose they are dangerous for the feeble and the hordes of high heel leather boot clad females. The situation might be improved with something of a welcome mat or runner separating the snow of the outside and the polished marble of the inside. But alas no such thing is common here and instead the inadvertent ice rinks prosper.

So there are no snow plows here…largely because it doesn’t snow that much. But there are also no sand trucks, and they have stopped using salt on the roads. So that means what falls generally stays. Also on the shady sides of buildings and mysteriously covering certain roads and intersections are inches of jumbled ice. Not smooth, rather hilly and rutted, but super slick. On campus the first year students are tasked with chipping away the foot packed snow from sidewalks and roads with flat shovels. It’s a big job…but there are at least several thousand freshmen to do it.

Went to the police/visa office yesterday to arrange a new visa. It was quite the place. Nothing like the Polson town hall where I originally got my passport. This place was bustling. Long snaking lines without much sense to them, people sitting and standing all over the place, several clerks working, several work stations empty, and the same thing repeated on all five floors. Keep in mind this is just Ha'erbin. I can't imagine what things in a Big city would be like. Surprisingly enough most people where there to get visa's to Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. There were very few foreigners, and very few Chinese applicants for new passports. Two hours later I walked out down a hundred dollars and on my way to a new visa. Aside from the long lines I remember the foot tall letters on the wall behind the clerks "Rigorously Enforce the Law Warmly Serve the People"
"严格执法热情服务“

Dinner Extravaganza

2008-12-05T10:52:00.003+08:00

Not going to lie, it has been cold. Frozen nose hairs and breath condensing and freezing into intricate ice crystals on the edges of my scarf.

There have been a few interesting developments in the last week, mostly centered around meeting the mayor of Ha’erbin for dinner last Sunday and again Wednesday.

A friend of a friend was visiting from the US last weekend. It just so happened that his father is music composer and happened to have some sort of business relations with a music publisher/ distributor here in Ha’erbin. It also turns out that the composer’s brother is a major in a large city in southern China, and the publisher/ distributor is possibly the mayor of Ha’erbin. I say possibly for three reasons. One, I only know her surname, two I cant seem to find her listed online, and there, of the locals I have asked, none have known the name of the mayor. She has held the position for 20 years, she said. I would assume someone would know. But, whatever, she says she is the mayor and has taken us out to dinner twice.

The first dinner was just my brother, our American friend and her visiting American friend (fluent in Cantonese and English), his cousin the interpreter (from Mandarin to Cantonese), the mayor and the mayor’s friend and college age daughter. It was quite the affair, semi awkward. Way too much food. There is a Chinese custom, unclear weather it is modern or traditional so it might not be fair to describe it as a custom, maybe better to say a practice; a practice to treating people to dinner, ordering extravagant amounts of food and not eating most of it. Apparently you must order outrageous amounts of food to demonstrate your commitment to doing business with your dinner guests (ie impress them by wasting food and money). If you don’t shovel food onto the table, your potential business partners will think you are not genuinely interested in making a deal with them. The monumental dinners are also used to sustain business relations, as in the case of this particular Sunday. The mayor apparently wanted one, to show respect for the visiting American’s father and politically powerful uncle, and two to smooth the road for distributing a new CD in southern china.

Dinner was good and we gorged. There were 20+ dishes of very well done Chinese food. Smoked eel, pig slaughter stew (sauerkraut with pig organs), sushi, various vegetable and meat stir fry dishes, crabs, cold Chinese style cold salads, bite size fish, boiled dumplings and on and on. Conversations varied, but were stunted by significant language barriers. The cousin, a native of Guangzhou, and fluent in Cantonese and partially fluent in Mandarin, gave translation to his visiting American cousin while I gave translation to my brother and our local American friend and vise versa to the mayor. I also tried to make small talk with the mayor’s friend and her daughter, while trying to tune out the English conversations my brother was having with the other two Americans. It was a bit hectic.

Wednesday the whole deal happened again. The mayor picked us up and drove us to another fancy restaurant, a seafood restaurant. I had not seen a restaurant like this before, it was very upscale. Our table wasn’t just a table, it was a room. The building had been designed very similar to a hotel. Our room had a closet for coats, its own bathroom, a couch and a big round table for 12. The table could have easily been replaced with a bed if the restaurant went under, or needed to host a conference. In attendance were my brother, our local American friend, the mayor, 4 dudes (“the man” sort of dudes, older, super fat, politically powerful, wealthy, and self acknowledging), a music composer, and two college music professors. One of the dudes was possibly the provincial minister of education, one was a director for CCTV (Central China TV, the main 10+ channels nationally), and the other two held high level university administration jobs. This meal was much less awkward. My brother and our American friend mostly talked to each other, while I listened and joined in where I could with the larger Chinese conversation. As it turns out, everyone but the music student were old friends, often go out to dinner with each other, and frequently play mahjong. Dinner was equally extravagant, but less was ordered, so we actually managed to finish about 50% of it. Since it was a seafood restaurant, fishy things were on center stage. Nothing too fishy though, fish, shrimp (both fried and raw), sushi, squid, abalone, scallops, and other strange sea creatures unidentifiable and with confusing Chinese names. It was all really good, although raw shrimp are just too slimy and cold to be really desirable.

I was a bit hesitant about going to the second dinner. I can’t help but thinking the mayor had some underlying motive, which she still might have. Her stated purpose was to introduce us to more people in Ha’erbin, which she accomplished. She also said that our American friend should tutor the two music teachers in conversation English, which they probably could use. One of the music said one sentence in English, “my English poor.” The other one sang a sentence or two “I want to study oral English,” although it was unclear whether the singing was intentional or just an unfortunately funny accent.

On the ride home, after talking to the major’s driver for some time as he ‘accidentally’ took two wrong turns and doubled our driving time by driving 30km/h for most of the way, he asked for my phone number and invited my brother and I go drinking and eat lamb kabobs over the next weekend.

Last night my brother, another American, and a Chinese guy, his girlfriend and I went to Pizza hut. It was pretty much Pizza hut in the states, with some major differences. In China, pizza hut is a nice restaurant. Very clean and expensive (relatively, it’s about the same as the US price). The pizza’s are cooked in the same style as in the US, but the toppings are different. Very different. We had a curry chicken pizza with chicken some vegetables and curry saucy instead of tomato sauce and a salmon seafood pizza, with raw salmon, squid shrimp, wasabi, and a white cream sauce instead of tomato sauce. Both were pretty good. There was also Chinese style potato salad which was not good.

Ice, Carrot, and Ultrasound.

2008-11-26T08:36:00.001+08:00

The ice field is done! Or maybe as done as it is going to get. There are still some big holes, ridges and ditches here and there. But it is mostly smooth and getting a thorough work over by masses of Chinese students. Some gliding smoothly carelessly weaving in and amongst their classmates and others awkwardly stumbling and painfully failing. We have one pair of ice skates…still need one more. There is a slight problem finding skates for larger feet.

The other night we went out with street shoes from some carrot ice soccer and freeze tag. It was a great 2 hours of fun. There were five of us, and aside from my brother the rest shall remain unidentified for their sake. One of the unknowns was ridiculous. Granted running on ice and making quick turns to avoid pursuers or score carrot goals is not easy business. However this one person evoked jolly laughter in casey and I frequently. It was mostly due to their manner of running, but sometimes also due to various noise emitted whilst being pursued. Their body above the knees was kept perfectly still and erect. Only the knees ankles and feet moved. Their heels never touched the ice. So it looked like a warner bros style cartoon character, speedily tiptoeing hither and thither. On top of that their arms were kept tight at their sides, with their hands pointing at 90 degree angles straight out to the sides. I thought they looked like a penguin.

Yesterday I went for a physical for my new visa. $60 later I guess I had been checked, but in a way very different from anything I had had before. Everything that I thought should go into a physical was included in this one..but not actually checked, just stamped and signed off. Each portion of the physical was performed by a different doctor in a different room. For example the for the external check, I was asked to stand hold my hands out in front of me and turn them over. Check, stamp, sign. The internal check involved a stethoscope on my nipples. The eye, mouth, ear check was just a check, stamp, sign. I did get some blood taken, as well as an ultrasound, ekg, and a chest xray. So I guess they will know if I am pregnant, have a heart condition or TB. I get to go back tomorrow to pick up the results.

More cold

2008-11-23T11:40:00.003+08:00

It actually warmed up the past few days. Things even got close to melting. The weather report still forecasts "bitter cold" "frigid" and "extremely cold."

The ice skating rink is getting closer to resembling something useful rather than the sad mixture of frozen mud and ice it started out as. It is enormous. Not just a single rink, but more like 8 put together with some trees added for challenges and visual appeal. Currently the ice field is mostly ice covered, but with numerous imperfections. Ridges, lumps, cracks, holes and the such. They have about ten sleds mounted with 200gal water barrels and a nifty water spraying deal on the back. I think they will start physically pulling them around in the next few days to smooth out the ice.

In anticipation of its completion we are going to buy ice skates today. We are anticipating on spending a very small amount of money on a couple of used pairs. Any guesses on how much new or use skates go for?

new address

2008-11-23T11:34:00.003+08:00

Jason Clark #601
PO Box 228
Northeast Forestry University
Ha'erbin, Heilongjiang Province 150040
People's Republic of China

Cell
086 13796 033047

Winter

2008-11-18T21:55:00.002+08:00

Last Friday night outside a Russian bar full of Russians two Russians refused to believe that I wasn’t Russian and insisted on talking Russian to me interspersed with bits of English and very bad Chinese and trying to convince me that I was indeed Russian. This went on for several minutes, no exaggeration. I tried to talk to them and get a Russian insight into life in Haerbin, but failed to get any response other than “Rusky!” I think they were genuinely dumb or drunk and dumb.

This last week it got cold. Not as cold as it will get but cold enough for now. We are seeing highs of -13C and lows of -20C. Or in more familiar terms 7F to -4F. It’s still November. January and February are supposed to be the cold ones. I wonder how much more the temperature can drop. We are still losing 3minutes of daylight each day. Right now the sun makes a very fast long low arc across the southern sky. The solstice is only 4 weeks off from now and then each day will be longer…but not quite warmer.

I know it’s cold now by the instantaneous freezing of nose hairs I experience immediately upon exiting any building. It’s not that cold, it can get colder. Casey and I have a bet going about at what temperature water will freeze when poured out our 6^th story window but before hitting the ground. -20C is not cold enough.

leaves
some snow
boiler

In other news I haven't really started my research or at least not like I had in mind. I am currently reading Chinese articles about China's forest management policy, which is good. I have hopes to get started on some other thing this week, but we will wait and see if they play out.

week one and counting

2008-11-09T11:32:00.003+08:00

First week at the forestry university.

I started off the week with lots of introductions to people in the engineering college. I got to see the human factor lab, which i am still not sure what is used for. The lab is full of machines to test reflexes, muscle memory, reaction times, multi-tasking abilities, estimation abilities and so on. Apparently the machines are useful to determine human abilities as they might relate to future machines and our abilities to operate them.

I also got to see the the provincial forest model. It is a comprehensive model of all of the provinces forests combined into one model and by combined i mean the model is divided into 4 parts with red lines and there is a fifth part on separate table. the thing is huge, probably 20ftX30ft. This last year several foreign forest experts came to admire the model, even western countries dont have a model as good as this one. dont get me wrong, other countries have forest models, but none are complete animated.... the whole thing is filled with little electric motors and wired up to a computer. every single tree can be 'cut down(fall over)' through the click of a mouse. even the little trucks and tree cranes move it really exciting. although this week it wasnt fully operational. i need to go back next week and see it in full action.

I started taking classes here as well. Right now I have two. One called environmental science, which is very uninteresting, and one called forest ecology which is actually pretty good. Environmental science consists of powerpoint slides copied directly from a poor quality american environmental science book from the 1980's. The professor has calls on students from the roster to read the english slides and then translate them into chinese. This might be a good idea if the students could read english or even if after stumbling through the slide they had any idea what they just read. That would make translating a bit easier. My motive for being in the class is not to learn anything new, but rather to help improve my chinese. This class does not help. The forest ecology class is good because the professor knows what he is doing and gives good lectures.

Forestry Uni here we come

2008-11-02T21:48:00.002+08:00

It’s been something of a big week. Last weekend I packed up my stuff and moved out of the international student dorm. I wasn’t too sad to be leaving the dorm, but leaving my roommate, Song Lailong, was tough. I really liked living with him, and will definitely miss talking to him everyday. We will have to make a point to meet up for dinner weekly to catch up.

I put my bags in a cab and took the 15min drive to my new university. The Northeast Forestry University. 东北林业大学. My new apartment is part of the graduate student housing and on the 6^th floor. I arrived and placed my bags in the middle of a large stark room wrapped in bright white walls. The bright white walls have just been re-plastered/white washed and were a stark contrast to the visible deposit of dust on all horizontal surfaces. After some sweeping and mopping, the place was a bit nicer. Although the supplied mop consisting only of a stick with a shredded tee shirt attached really only got the floor wet.

There wasn’t much in the apartment even though it is furnished. There are two single beds, two chairs, three desks, two wardrobes, a tv, washer, fridge, and a single burner gas stove. After cleaning, I went to get some dishes, pots, and food. I got an amazing amount of veggies for $3 and spices for another $3.

On Monday I presented myself at the engineering college to arrange classes, register and meet the relevant officials. It was really interesting and everyone was very nice. I start class this next Monday. Casey arrived Tuesday morning.

We spent most of the week touring around Ha’erbin. We also made the decision to buy a second single burner stove and splice the gas line to hook it up. Now we are cooking in style with two burners. We also outfitted ourselves with an iron wok for all our stir frying needs and a cast iron griddle for griddle cakes and omelets.

After a rather awkward introduction in which building manager tried out his English, I was handed to phone to talk to one of the American English teachers on campus. Thursday night, Casey and I went out to dinner with 3 of the 4 other Americans on campus. We talked for about 3 hours about Ha’erbin.

Friday was Halloween and not much of a big deal in china. Casey, I and two other guys went wearing blue and yellow factory worker uniforms. After dinner at a traditional Chinese dinner and some homemade mead, we went to the one western bar in town to meet a bunch of foreigners ‘celebrating’ Halloween at the bar. Celebrating didn’t consist of anything more than a bit of drink and chat wrapped in costumes.

On Sunday I met the three Sudanese guys living in our building. They are all here studying civil engineering. Two speak some English and the third speaks some Chinese. Their first language is Arabic, but that doesn’t help them very much in China or at the university. They take one semester of Chinese and then 4 years of civil engineering. The only catch is the civil engineering courses are all in Chinese and one semester of Chinese doesn’t get them anywhere near able to understand. So instead they learn mostly in English from the internet. I have not found out yet why they are here or how their Ph.D. here is a good idea, but I will keep it in mind to ask.

Today there were snow flurries, but everything just melted on the ground. The forecast has a week more of mild weather and then a dive into 6 months of sub-zero temps.

Tomorrow on the menu: griddle cakes and hawthorn berry compote.

Snow

2008-10-24T16:35:00.001+08:00

It snowed today. Lots of flurries, not quite cold enough for it to stick though. I also saw my breath. Winter is coming. Snow is in the forecast for 3 of the next 6 days.

Air pollution

2008-10-23T17:17:00.006+08:00

The air has actually been pretty good here in Ha'erbin. Until last week. Last Thursday was a bit cloudy/foggy, but both me and my roommate woke up a bit weird. I went running that afternoon and felt a uncomfortable burning sensation in my chest. That night a i had the symptoms of a mild sinus infection and began self medicating.

Friday was worse, in regard to the sinuses. I was mostly cured by Monday. I didnt know that the air was bad Thursday-Saturday until Monday when I had a look at the Chinese EPA Air quality website. I found this little graph.

The first value(81) is Sunday(10/19) Friday is the 273. The values correspond to the Chinese air quality index, which is similar to the US EPA's AQI. The Chinese index as the same scale and same categories. I was a bit suspicious of this, so I investigate how both were calculated. Turns out they are not so similar. The indexes are based on 5 pollutants (SO2 , NO2 , Particles, CO, and O3). Only Particles and O3 are the same for both indexes. SO2 and CO both have much higher thresholds in the Chinese index. NO2 for 100+ and above all surpass US standards.
Sorry the table is ugly, blogspot is messing with the row height.

Chinese API	SO2	CO
Chinese API	US AQI	US AQI
50	28	46
100	60	86
200	198	500+
300	299	500+
400	500+	500+
500	500+	500+

Interesting enough since Sunday, the Chinese EPA air quality website has been "down".

From the EPA website:

Air Quality Index	Numerical		Meaning
Levels of Health Concern	Value	Colors
Good	0-50	Green	Air quality is considered satisfactory, and air pollution poses little or no risk.
Moderate	51-100	Yellow	Air quality is acceptable; however, for some pollutants there may be a moderate health concern for a very small number of people who are unusually sensitive to air pollution.
Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups	101-150	Orange	Members of sensitive groups may experience health effects. The general public is not likely to be affected.

Unhealthy	151-200	Red	Everyone may begin to experience health effects; members of sensitive groups may experience more serious health effects.
Very Unhealthy	201-300	Purple	Health alert: everyone may experience more serious health effects.
Hazardous	> 300	Maroon	Health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected.

Voltage

2008-10-23T17:00:00.002+08:00

I went to buy a voltage adapter today. Something I should have done 4 months ago. I sauntered over to the massive 'electric things' mall and descended into the basement. The floors above ground are fairly orderly, filled with litte stalls selling every sort of flash drive, mp3 player, dvd player and mouse you could ever imagine. Some name brands, some chinese brands, and lots of fakes. The basement is another world. Packed with the same little stalls, but each full of computer related hardware and pirated dvds. Stacks of scraped towers and printers fill the corners and aisles are packed with people searching for their favorite movie or lugging in some beast of 90's 'electric thing' needing repair.

I found my voltage converter without much fuss. Got home plugged it in, heard a strange buzzing noise immediately followed by a pop and no more buzzing noise. I quickly unplugged the very hot slightly smoking converter only to discover I had bought a 110-220 converter...not the required 220-110. Consequently china's 220 fried it. About that time my roommate came in and i told him the story. He recommended I immediately return to the store and explain that they have given me the 110-220 by mistake, and I had wanted the 220-110. The idea of trading in a fried adapter doesnt settle well with me, but hey, do as the locals do. I asked another guy on my way out and he said exactly the same thing.

At the store I repeated the magic little phrase..you gave me the wrong one, can you switch it? They took it to the back and then opened the little box it came in and began to smell it and pass it around to the other 4 superfluous employees for them to smell. This went on for a bit too long and I thought I was going to be caught in my life. Honestly the little thing smelled strongly of burnt electronics. While one guy was still smelling the thing, one employ came out and handed me the correct 220-110 and I was off.

One week and counting

2008-10-18T13:31:00.003+08:00

I am almost done. Oct 24 marks the end of my 4 month language program and the true beginning of a year of Chinese forestry management research.

The language program has been great for my Chinese, but I am ready for it to end and jump into forestry management. The past 4 months I have been studying a bit of the background stuff about Chinese forestry. It pretty different than the US.

Expect a summary of the Chinese Grain to Green program next week. Maybe even discussion of the most recent land reform discussion.

Veggies

2008-10-16T18:55:00.002+08:00

First of all lamb feast pictures.

So there is a practice here of buying up loads of cabbage and leeks in the fall, air drying them for a week, and then storing them inside for the remainder of the winter. That way come winter you dont have to buy veggies. Or back in the day, you could eat veggies because there werent any to buy in the winter. Things are bit different today. There are plenty of veggies available in the winter either grown in hothouses or shipped up from the south. Nevertheless the older generation still goes out and buys massive quantities of cabbage and leeks. This last week all the sidewalks and smaller streets were covered with their bounty laid out to dry before being squirreled away in corners of their houses.

PS there are lots of new photos scattered through out different albums. Just check the album date to see the most recent ones.

Tigers and Lamb(s)

2008-10-14T23:22:00.003+08:00

Some guy was eaten by a tiger. A zoo tiger. Right here in Ha'erbin at the tiger park. I havent been yet, but I will go. It sounds like a bunch of starved tigers in pens. You can buy things and to feed to them ranging from a live chicken to a live cow. Apparently, China's record for members of the public being mauled or eaten by zoo animals isnt so good.

Speaking of eating animals. I ate a lamb. We went to a restaurant called "one lamb" and ordered one lamb. After selected the cutest little cuddly wuddly white as snow one eye green one eye brown lamb, we sat and enjoyed some warm beer as it roasted in an electric rotisserie in the back. Some time later the little guy arrived on a platter. The presentation was somewhat lacking and the waiter immediately commenced tearing the flesh into chopstick size pieces with his hands. It was tasty. Have to go back for another. Pictures.

In other news, a student was bea1en by the po1ice this last weekend. Details are still unclear as to what exactly went down. But it seems there was an argument over one of the parties speeding in the parking lot, an ensuing argument, and then its not clear whether the student or the popo started it. Several other students were injured by the popo. Some of the popo may have been drinking, and the students were probably as well, as it occurred in a bar parking lot. There are pretty mixed opinions of the event. Some think the student deserved it, others think the cops were abusing power/ negligent. Every news source is a bit different. There are pictures and a video of only the argument if you search. I dont think Ha'erbin is dangerous, not any more than LA. This is only one incident and things like this are rare here. I am probably more likely to be eaten by a tiger.

You probably have heard something about this thing called the chinese zodiac. I happen to be a rat. Forthright, disciplined, systematic, meticulous, charismatic, hardworking, industrious, charming, eloquent, sociable, shrewd, and scheming. That about sums me up. 2008 is the year of the rat. I am supposed to have extra good luck. I am also supposed to wear red socks, underwear, belt, and as much red clothing as possible all year long for extra good luck. If only i had known. If you happen to be a cow/ox next year is yours, so ask santa for some extra lucky red clothes to welcome in the new year.

Gender equality hasnt quite spread here. There are many examples of inequality, but today I go for just one. What do you say when someone gives birth to a baby girl what do you say? so so. or at least you have less pressure now (referring to societal pressure to raise a stellar boy). Back in the days before government enforced single child rearing, if you had two or three girls and no boys, it was down right embarrassing to your family name. now(back then (before 1950's) girls didnt go to school, or at least not that often or for very long), girls are not held to the same standards. if your baby girl doesnt study well, so be it, but if your boy doesnt study well you better start worrying and get to doing something about it. when someone has a boy you say congratulations. When I explained the custom of pink and baby blue for babies, the first question was "americans think baby blue is better than pink, right?"

Slow like a mushroom

2008-10-11T17:55:00.002+08:00

Slowpoke just doesnt cut it. If you are slow, slow eating, slow thinking, slow moving, or slow writing you are slow like mushroom. Mushrooms are slow if you didnt notice. They dont really go anyway. But the do grow fast, or at least the characteristic mushroom shaped fruit grows fast. Some seem to appear in a day and wither the next.

There is a pretty significant hothouse mushroom and wild mushroom industry here. I look forward to the chance to do some hunting or gathering. If only there are monsters like ZA.

Terms or endearment. I plan to investigate this one further, but right now I might have a winner.
Four-Eyed Penguin. Given by one my teachers to her hubby to reflect his strong prescription glasses and waddling walk.

Two weeks of classes left. Then a move to an apartment, Casey's arrival, the beginning of regular cooking, thorough exploration of chinese cuisine, and the beginning of forest management research/study. Right now my supervisor has me lined to up to sit in on a full load of chinese forestry management classes. We will see how that goes. I am for trying for a week or so, or maybe even the semester if they are good, but I have other plans for the rest of the year...

Tonight various boiled vegetables and meats are on the menu. Hotpot it is. Literally a large hot pot placed on a burner in the center of the table in which i will place the most delicious greens, and most mysterious "meat balls" that bounce like super balls.

Fire! Detector

2008-10-08T22:32:00.002+08:00

I have a fire detector. Several weeks after the foretold plastic fire, they have deemed fire detectors as necessary in every room. Mine even beeps when i press the little red button. I should give it a real test with some paper scraps and a lighter just to see if there really is americium in there making things work.

If you want to describe someone as picky, dont just say picky, instead say the could find bones even in eggs! I have to say i have found bones in eggs, along with the rest of the chick fetus.

Also asians evolved from monkeys and westerners(white people, including europeans and cowboys) evolved from chimpanzees. Not sure about the rest of the races. But the separate ancestries sure does help to explain all kinds of differences. Body hair, facial features, physical strength, corruption...and the list goes on. Strangely enough the two species can still interbreed.

New weight loss plan, or at least ass shrinking plan. Just sit. Thats right, eat then sit. Apparently sitting actually works your butt, or at least "strokes" it and that just burns away the ass calories.

More various bits of conversations and opinions to come.

Chinese Wedding

2008-10-04T12:14:00.005+08:00

I just got back from a chinese wedding. I got up at 6am this morning to get breakfast and get ready. One of my teachers invited me and a classmate to attend. At 7am we went to do the couples new apt to watch the bride get ready and meet the maternal half of the family. Their new apartment is localed in a newly developed complex. There might be 20+ new apt buildings, still not fully leased/sold. It is all located on the outskirts of town making commuting a must. It was a very pretty place, much nicer than the periodic 'future apartment' pics i post.

At 9 we caravaned to a big military hotel to watch the ceremony and have lunch. It was a big hotel, with decorations to give a US wedding planner several heart attacks. Interesting enough I dont think the word tacky has entered into the chinese vocabulary. The ceremony began at 10, lasted maybe 5minutes, and was uneventful and uninteresting. There werent actually that many people paying attention. It was held in the lobby of the hotel. Lots of people talking and smoking as the MC conducted the ceremony. There was a brief intervention by some governmental official to make the whole thing official, then it was over.

We proceeded to lunch, where i was coerced by a gentleman at our table to drink bai jiu. Bai jiu is a clear 40-60% liquor commonly consumed in china by men. This particular brand was 50% or 100 proof and tasted like wretched fire water. I had three glasses with him, each larger than two shots. Then we moved on beer. There was lots of toasting for no reason and many toasts to the bride and groom. Being white in china, my classmate and I were invited to take pictures with the bride and groom.

The whole thing was over before 11am.

A sky filled with paper scraps and plastic bags

2008-09-30T08:41:00.003+08:00

I have yet to see it, but it is common enough that there is a phrase to describe it. 纸屑塑料袋满天飞。 It is supposedly a frequent site in the country side whenever there is a slight wind. Disposal of modern garbage/manmade garbage is mostly in piles where it will set for who knows how long. Along comes the wind and puff its gone. Into the trees, rivers, fields, and sky. Blown away to become someone else's problem. The results are easy to see. Trees are decorated with american pride, full of red, white, and blue plastic bags. Fields are littered with wrappers, bags, newspapers, and bottles. In the rivers plastic bags and bottles swim by.

These little insights into chinese life keep coming up in conversations.

Another dichotomy, this one about interpersonal relations

USA
Blunt, frank, put everything on the table (ie no secrets,hidden motives or opinions)
Dont like someone, think someone screwed up, just say it.

China
Read people, then base actions on your perception of their demeanor and disposition.
Speak in circles, around a topic
Use tact
Implied meanings, indirect approaches
Say one thing, and mean another (Good job, you worked really hard =*this is terrible, maybe you'll do better next time)

I asked where these ideas come from and apparently there are chinese books on Chinese vs. American psychology and interpersonal relations differences.

坐月子
A month of sitting.
A traditional custom/practice for new mothers in China. After the birth, the new mother is confined to the house and her bed for one month. During this month she is to lay in bed and breastfeed. She will be attended to by her mother or her mother-in-law and fed a diet of boiled eggs and millet porridge to replenish her nutrients.

Sparrow Eradication
Back in the days of the big MZD. Someone got the idea that sparrows were pests and eating all the grain. Grain production was very big in the planned economy. A sparrow eradication campaign was begun. Sparrows were netted, stoned, and killed in mass numbers country-wide until there were very few left. Lo and behold, an ecosystem imbalance ensued. While sparrows are seed eaters they also happen to eat insects. With the sparrows gone, a plague of locust was unleashed causing far more damage than the sparrows ever did. It is unclear whether the locust plague and the sparrow eradication were related or just coincidence, but the sparrow eradication campaign was dropped.

Thank you, Driver for considering our safety

2008-09-28T14:41:00.003+08:00

We returned this morning from a short jaunt to Dandong. From the train station we got on a bus and headed for campus. The streets were surprisingly lively for 4am on a sunday morning. Lots of people shuffling about and cars coming and going. Not even 5minutes from the station we were stopped at a red light when a taxi flew by from behind and blew through the red light. No hesitation, just plain bravado. I took the moment to thank the driver "Thank you, Driver for considering our safety."

It was overall a good trip. We went to a relaxing little island on the yellow sea. Ate some seafood, had a bonfire/disco party on the beach, rode tandem bikes, and I went for a swim. The disco beach bonfire party was unexpected and ridiculous. Three unenthusiastic dudes played crazy russian disco music accompanied by absurd music videos that had nothing to do with the music. The music videos were of the same genre offered at the karaoke bars. Most of them consist of a guy and a girl in some sort of romantic situation. Walking down a beach, riding a motorcycle, in a hotel... There is no plot, just lots of shots of them from various angles for the duration of the song. They shot with handheld cameras, and the "actors" probably got paid less than $10.

I ate some interesting food. Had some crabs, what i think were clams, and some snails. I also ate a whole rotisserie rabbit for lunch one day. There was plenty of free/dead time on the trip which gave us time to practice our jianzi (a feathered hackysack) game.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/DanDong
http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/Food

Fire response

2008-09-28T14:30:00.002+08:00

Back from a short vacation to Dandong, a city right across from n. korea on the Yalu river. Returning at 4am this morning I was greeted by two bright little signs. Both advising us to avoid fires by reducing our use the electric fan.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/Ads

Air Raid Siren

2008-09-21T16:19:00.003+08:00

It turns out the Air Raid Siren test was not really a test. It actually served as a reminder to northeast china residents that in 1931 on Sept. 18th. Japanese soldiers, in response to a railroad bombing, invaded and occupied northeast china until the end of WWII. The sirens served to remind people what the Japanese did to them.

Snippets from the last week

2008-09-18T11:49:00.002+08:00

Apparently one of my teachers has a history of making her students cry. Male students. She said "they looked big and tall, but then they just cried." I asked what she did to make them cry and she said it was just the normal stuff..."say it again, say it again, dont you remember?, didnt you prepare for you class?" In the midst of crying the students told our teacher that it wasnt her fault, it was their's, they were upset with their own failure.

While running in the rain to the badminton courts last night, wearing only a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "go china/中国加油" and athletic shorts, I overheard two ladies talking. I only picked up a sentence as i passed. "one pair of pants just isnt enough, you have to wear two." Fall has arrived here. Day time temps are in the 50-60's and jackets, long pants, and longunderwear have come out. I am still sporting shorts, t-shirt, and sandals...

Our dorm caught on fire yesterday. Just a small fire, but enough to melt some serious amounts of plastic bathroom decor and fill the place with putrid burnt plastic smoke, and black ash. We are being told it was the fault of the the occupants of the room for leaving the bathroom exhaust fan on too long, causing it to catch on fire. That might be true..but exhaust fans are there to exhaust the perpetual sewer smell and thick moistness of the poorly plumbed plastic lined bathrooms. I am prone to think the fan had a little quality control problem. Either way, all is well and supposedly some fire investigators are coming to check all the bathrooms soon. By the way there are no smoke detectors or fire sprinklers, but there is a big fire hose on everyfloor. I think it was the burnt plastic smell that tipped someone off. Although I did here someone say they just someone was cooking in the kitchen. Plastique ala char.

There was an air raid siren test this morning. Either that or japan came back to reclaim a part of the continent.

Motivation

2008-09-11T09:59:00.003+08:00

little bits of chinese wisdom are everywhere. some sound like wise sayings, others like rubbish. i am sure most have some basis in confucius, taoist, or buddhist teachings, and others are cultural beliefs or practices.

here are three, more to come later.

peaches care for people, apricots harm people, plums kill people. The meaning is eat more peaches.

Big round eyes are pretty eyes, for girls at least. This is a basic belief here and I have run up against it many times. However the other day in class while my teacher was talking about self encouragement, while saying people tell themselves they are pretty, she simultaneously used her fingers to spread her eyelids, thus creating the illusion of a big round eyes. now if you didnt know about the big eye thing, you might have though pretty meant something resembling a little kid making googely eyes.

Out of the same conversation i learned that many chinese, especially older chinese, have self encouragement sayings that they will write and hang of the walls of their house and say to themselves everyday. I immediately thought of those motivation posters, that I think are particular to business minded people. the posters with a photograph of a mountain or a forest. on the bottom is printed a word like "Determination" "It is the size of one's will which determines success." I think most of these posters are a joke, and some of them are.

But my teacher was very serious about this self encouragement phrase. Apparently there are lots of popular ones passed on by important people. I dont have a complete list of these phrases, but things like "hard work can overcome all problems" or "From where there is no hope, find hope" are common. She was also very surprised that I did not have a phrase of my own. 'if i dont have a phrase, what motivates me?' I replied, 'I just am motivated, i didnt know people needed phrases to be motivated. ' Who knows I could just wake up one day with no motivation and need a phrase.

Whats your phrase?

Return from the south

2008-09-08T20:36:00.005+08:00

I am back. If you didnt know I was gone, i was for about 10 days. Which did follow about two weeks of a ferocious chinese cold. So am I am back in more than one way.

I spend the last 10 days in Changsha, Hunan and Chengdu, Sichuan. Both are possible cities for my next semester here in china. I went to scope them out, as well as get a taste of southern/central china. Both cites were great, especially compared to Ha'erbin. I also got a good taste of strange mandarin accents. I met several people who spoke utterly impossible for me to understand chinese dialects. Luckily everyone understood whatever I said using my 'standard' chinese. Luckily most of the people spoke some standard chinese, or something close to it.

Changsha was a nice enough city, although fairly characterless, unless you call shopping a character trait. It is a provincial capital which makes it big, similar to harbin with an ambiguous population estimate of 4 million. I rode a bus for an hour and didnt get but halfway across the city. That being said, it was far more enjoyable than Ha'erbin, more of a relaxed feeling, less traffic, smaller roads, and fewer soulless concrete massifs. There were tree lined streets, cozy little restaurants and friendly people abound. There were also several rather large and very nice public parks. Most importantly there was a 2000+year old mummy chinese lady preserved in vinegar. Preserved with her, although not in vinegar, were lots of neat artifacts, including some of the most intricate silk clothing i have seen.

From Changsha, I took an overday-overnight train to chengdu. 11am-8am. Got to see lots and lots of farmland. The only things that interrupted the farmland in the over 600 miles between the two cities were tunnels and other cities. Arriving in chengdu I was met by a representative of the hostel that resembled a member of the gorillaz, the small one with the shifty eyes. Got settled in the hostel then walked down the street to find a small place cranking out the breakfast fair, enormous steamed dumplings dripping with sweet msg laden oil and tasty goodness.

The highlights of Chengdu were the tea gardens, especially at the Taoist temple. I think I spent about 3 hours either at the temple or chatting up 80+ year old retired professors and various other retirees all the whilst sipping delicious jasmine tea. I also managed to venture out of the city to see the world's largest/tallest buddha. I didnt even know the thing existed until the day before I got on the bus to go see it. It was enormous, but even more impressive was its location on a cliff overlooking the convergence of three rivers. There were plenty of other smaller buddhas in the vicinity and swarms of chinese tourists. I had lunch at fishing village nearby. Just after starting to eat I was approached by smiling chinese guy. He asked if I wanted to joing him and his wife and told me he want to treat me to lunch with him and the three large fish he had ordered. I gladly accepted. I ordered some pretty good food, especially this dish of stir-fried green onions and bacon. The fish was really good too. Although only a short while before I had witnessed the fish removed from its bucket and then swung by a rope against the stone floor a few times to kill it. I talked about chinese life, improving quality of life, travel, chinese liquor, and toasted warm beer to warm welcomes to china. By the end of the meal the couple invited me to go with them to a near by scenic buddhist mountain (12000ft) for the weekend and to come visit them in their town. I had a catch a plane back to ha'erbin the next day, regretfully, I had to refuse both generous offers. Although we did exchange contact info for when I do return to sichuan.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/chengdu

Eastern Russia

2008-09-08T20:36:00.000+08:00

so i was just playing translator for the dorm staff and some newly arrived russians. the russians didnt speak chinese and the dorm staff sure doesnt speak russian. they speak a little english, but mostly just a few nouns scattered amidst some chinese. turns out the russians dont really speak much english either. even basic slow english was not working too well. either way, after the exchange, i was talking to the dorm staff about all the new students arriving and i mentioned that the russians didnt really understand what i told them in english. she was astounded and said something along the lines of I thought english was the international language that everyone understood. I need to practice my english. I guess russia gets excluded from the international sphere, or at least eastern russia.

there are some pretty interesting stereotypes/prejudices against eastern russians here. Most of them stem from a belief that they are too dumb and lazy to help themselves. Apparently, the situation is quite bad right across the border. I can vouch for the validity of the story, but i talked to a local who had been to visit some cities in eastern russia. they said tomatoes were $5US and potatoes were $1US each. They also said all the russians wanted to buy his 20cent lighter because they couldnt buy lighters in russia.

from another perspective, one of my teachers believes the russians that come study chinese are rather smart, but dont apply themselves.

olympic regulations

2008-09-08T20:30:00.002+08:00

this is a bit outdated now, but still interesting. I was reading about the olympics and came upon a list of regulations for behavior while attending events. Most of it was pretty straight forward like no bombs, knives, other weapons, poisonous gases, etc. Some was a little more amusing. Drunken belligerence is banned. as is streaking, disturbing events and breaking laws.

I was also reading and talking to people about behavior suggestions/ codes beijing residents may have or may not have received or been able to watch on tv/ listen to on the radio. Included in this list were going shirtless for men (pretty common especially in the summer, although not as common as the roll-the-shirt-up-over-belly move), spitting, and wearing your pajamas outside.

Olympics!

2008-08-22T17:06:00.001+08:00

I return from the capital and hustle and bustle. I had forgotten just how big Beijing is. It is big. Comparable to LA in terms of population, but size, I dont know. Using public transport it is enormous. Consider riding public transport for multiple hours every day and always ending up somewhere different. You could ride to subway for a hour in any direction and not reach the end. One day I started from the center of the city, rode the subway for a hour, then transfered to a bus for half hour before finally reaching my destination on the third ring road. There are six ring roads. The diameter of the 4,5,6 and ring roads must be immense.

Beijing was much the same, except there was noticeable crowding. It was hard to differentiate the normal summer tourism crowding and Olympic crowding. There were people everywhere. Since I was there last three new subway lines have opened, and they are all packed. It didnt help that half of the private cars were prevented from driving to reduce beijing's air pollution. Beijing Air,
Harmful Air

It was pretty and relaxing to take a break from Ha'erbin and chinese class. Attending track and field was exciting. The crowd was mostly chinese and there were a surprising number of Empty Seats. In the stands I was asked to pose with some little chinese boy for a picture. The same little boy a little latter was instructed by his mother to retrieve a coke bottle from under my seat and then urinate in it. I guess she wasnt willing to take him to the restroom.

The olympic park is enormous. It took a good half hour to walk from the front gate to the rear gate and the beginning of the forest park. When I go back to beijing in a week I will explore the forest park. I cant help but wonder, what will become of the olympic park when the olympics are done. Right now it is just very wide two mile paved swath of land with a few buildings here and there. I assume there is a massive underground complex of offices and facilities, as I saw many barricaded staircases. We will see later this year on another trip. By the way have Beijing and the Friendlies welcomed you yet? Beijing Welcomes You

So I am not alone in being disappointed with CCTV's coverage of the olympics. Here is a piece that explains some of vexations in prettier language. NBC vs CCTV

In other news, I have a week of classes left. Just enough time for midterms, and then a 10day vacation to the south. On the 29th I leave for Changsha via beijing and eventual end up in Chengdu. Back in harbin on the 8th. Going to explore and check out possible locations for next semester.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/olympic

Olympics TV

2008-08-15T14:11:00.002+08:00

I want to know what the Olympic coverage is like in the states, or other countries. Are most of the events broadcast, are the highlights and stats? Do the broadcasts focus on the US teams? What is the commentary like?

Olympic coverage here is interesting. All coverage is provided by the state run CCTV (Chinese Central TV station). There are about 4 separate CCTV channels broadcasting Olympic coverage of some sort and several others not. One channel was even renamed from CCTV 5 to CCTV Olympics.

Chinese events, especially potential Chinese gold medal events are the main focus. What else would you expect. Gold medal replays are frequent, repetitive, and glorious. I bet you havent seen the three women's weightlifting gold medalists lifting their final weight over 30 times. I have. I have seen more slow motion jumping and running replays of the young Chinese gymnastic team than I want. I keep going down the list of the 17+ gold medals china has already won. There is great pride in the athletes, and there should be. The Chinese athletes have done
very well thus far.

The sporting commentary is not what I remember from watching in the states. The Chinese commentators are very critical of the foreign athletes. They might me critical of the Chinese athletes as well, but the only events I have seen broadcast have all resulted Chinese gold
medals and nothing but praise for the outstanding performance of the Chinese athletes. Is it like this in the US as well? I dont remember as much critical commentary. There lots of comments on form, style, execution, balance, strength, coordination....and on and on. The commentary for last night's China vs. Austria pingpong was particularly critical of the Austrian's form and style. The Austrian lost.

I am off in a few hours for the heart of china. I expect to find it beautiful, clean, full of foreigners, and helpful Chinese youth dressed in blue.

olympics

2008-08-12T21:22:00.002+08:00

I am going. This friday night we board the train for beijing. Got three big days in the city and one precious ticket to see the 110m hurdles first round including the chinese Liu Xiang and American Terrence Trammell. An extremely kind former coworker gifted me the tickets he was unable to use.

Its pretty excited, not only to escape the drear of chinese class and harbin, but also to go back to beijing. i want to see first hand what has changed over the past two years and what all this talk about beijing putting on a false face is all about. There have been several reports in the western news about beijing walling off areas of the city, erecting fences, tearing down neighborhoods, building false tourist attractions, etc. Now we get to see what is true.

When I was last in beijing in 2006, they had begun work on the olympic facilities but there weren't many noticeable changes. Full report to come next week.

Things Ｉ dont yet understand

2008-08-12T21:11:00.003+08:00

Plastic bottle collecting.

There are numerous people scouring the campus daily in search of plastic bottles. They collect them and sell them. Reports of how much they are worth vary between $0.01 and $0.07 per bottle. I have no idea how many bottles one might collect in a day, but it is apparently worth it and the competition with other collectors is fierce. It is not uncommon if you are carrying a half full bottle to be approached or chased by a bottle collector requesting you finish it and give them the empty bottle.

High heels everywhere.

I know most of the chinese women are short, and apparently taller is better. I still dont understand walking around this campus in high heels daily. I have heard it is hard to walk in high heels. The natural difficulty combined with the array of uneven awkward surfaces around campus seems to make the daily life for the high heeled precarious if not dangerous. I have yet to see anyone fall, but have seen some impressive blisters.

Clarification

2008-08-06T15:54:00.002+08:00

I dont actually eat bugs all the time.
Only sometimes and entirely by choice. Uncooked insects are rather abundant. Culinary cooked bugs are actually rare in harbin, although, I have heard they are more popular in the south. That will have to wait.

Food is not that interesting, as most of my meals on the the cafeteria. I eat out at local restaurants for most dinners. Restaurants are very prevalent, as regular chinese people eat out frequently.

Breakfast can be anything from steamed dumplings with fennel stalk or pork filling, plain steamed buns, fried buns with pork cabbage filling, corn pancakes fried in oil, donut like things dripping with oil (you tiao，油条), milk, soy milk, rice porridge, hard boiled eggs, fried eggs, and pickled vegetables.

Lunch and dinner blend together. Mostly assortments of stir fried vegetables and meats. Standard vegies plus lots of chinese cabbage and eggplant. Meats are either stir fried with some veggies or fried with their own sauce and maybe a light breading. There are also boiled dumplings, fried rice, noodle soups and fried noodles. And Rice, lots of white fluffy rice.

There is alot of oil involved with most food.

Currently it is watermelon season, so most dinners are followed with a trip to the watermelon pile to buy a half watermelon. About 5lbs for $0.75. Did i mention food is cheap? If I eat 3 meals at the cafeteria, probably spend $2 a day. If i go for the plain stuff and gorge on rice, $1.50.

What is china? What is america?

2008-08-06T15:27:00.003+08:00

Rather relative and not any one thing. Today's topic for class was what best represented China and the US. We came up with a quite an impressive list.

China:

Panda
Jackie Chan
Kung Fu
Manufacturing ('Factory of the World')
China Shipping containers
Tea
Calligraphy
Great Wall
Silk
Chinese Opera

Efficient
Democratic
Equality
Self Importance
Arrogance
Freedom
Money
Modernity
Hollywood
McDonalds, KFC, Nike, Coke

I cant say I agree with either list. Actually the whole activity of making lists to represent countries is rather disagreeable. I just want to argue with each item, argue that a list couldnt ever hope to even come close to accurately representing a country, let alone a city. But I have to play along in class.

Friday I get to give an oral report on what represents chinese culture. I give oral reports daily, and dislike them. I dislike them because I feel limited by the rather simple and often binary prompts. Like "is a large national population a good thing or a bad thing?" I begin most of my reports with, its not a question of good or bad. There are advantages and disadvantages to both sizes and there are sizes in the middle. Then go on to give some examples. In the population report, I talked about per capita natural resources, carrying capacity, and agricultural output's dependency on oil(or rather, how oil has allowed us to exceed the natural carrying capacity). I think pomona might have influenced my responses.

I went for a walk the other day and here are the results.
http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/archy

I have been adding photos to existing albums rather than creating new albums. So expect the archy, strange things, chongzi, and soon to be 'sheng huo' albums to get new photos regularly.

Olympics in the news

2008-08-03T12:45:00.003+08:00

The olympics is in the news here everyday. On TV and in the papers its all 'ow un whey'

Most of the stuff on tv and in the news is pretty rosy.

Finally some real american investigative reporting.

http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=aqNaAU2vXlI#

Dinner and another day exploring

2008-08-03T11:25:00.002+08:00

I went out exploring again yesterday. This time to one of the shopping districts for a more thorough investigation. What I had before thought was a mediocre pedestrian underpass lined with clothing vendors/stores turns out to be a vast underground city jammed packed with women's clothing, women, and the occasional mens clothing or leather jacket stall. I spent about an hour wandering around in search of a t-shirt vendor in hopes of purchasing some chinglish keepers to no avail. When I emerged it was still daylight and I was very far from where I started. After finding my bearings, I reentered the labyrinth the the intent of underpassing a large intersection. I emerged a few minutes later further away from the intersection, but on a different wrong side. I normally dont have trouble with directions or navigating, but the womens clothing underground city is packed and very confusing, as every hallway looks the same, and there are many turns, twists and strange stairs. After a second attempt I made my way under the intersection.

On my way home I found a "tasty dog" restaurant and a dumpling restaurant which will be explored in the coming week.

Last night was the final dinner for the students on the summer program. They one week of exams left, then they return to the states leaving tony and I here until the new crop arrives in September. Dinner was an all you can eat hotel buffet, not that interesting, nor that tasty. I did get to eat something labeled as 'quail' and some silk worms. The 'quail' was a small bird no bigger than a baseball cooked whole. After the dinner we(3 americans and 3 chinese) went exploring harbin we found some super fun exercise machines and some more insects to eat. Conversations were varied, but topics included remote sensing, public displays of affection, long distance relationships, the 2005 benzine spill (nytimes,iht, bbc, wikipedia) racial discrimination in the US, obama, and homosexuality in the US. Overall it was really interesting talking the the chinese students and getting insights into chinese perceptions.

For example, one student mentioned that in the interview process to be a roommate with one of the american students he was asked whether he minded living with a a gay american. He didnt mention his response, but he did say, before that interview he had never thought about the possibility of sharing a room with a gay man. Homosexuality isnt visible in china. This student said he had never met a gay man and asked if we americans had. Thats sort of a strange question. My college had a queer resource center, complete with a director, student staff, and numorous 'mentors' to assist incoming students integrate with the queer community and explore their queer identity. Of course I had met some gay guys, they are a large contingent of metropolitan american cities. There are even tv shows based on not much more than being gay and living in a city.

I should probably mention that the program here has a language pledge. It wasnt a big deal, i just scratched my name at the bottom of a page with some rules one it. Either way, all of my interactions are in chinese, whether they be with the other american students or the chinese students. The chinese students signed a similar pledge promising not to speak english with us. My chinese is improving. Remote sensing is a pretty advanced topic to be talking about in chinese, at least i think so.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/Food

Bank Confusions

2008-08-03T09:43:00.005+08:00

I have been trying to get a wire transfer setup from the US to my chinese bank account for the last two weeks. I started by strolling into the bank of china and setting up a bank account. It was an easy painless process, although strange. I had to create a 6 digit pin and enter it about 40 times throughout the account opening process. After the account was open I asked for the wire transfer numbers. I was supplied with one number, an address, and my acc number.
Before I left the states, I had called the US bank and asked what I needed to do to wire money. I needed my acc number, a routing number, and the wire transfer code. I was a bit suspicious when I got an address instead of a routing number. Bear in mind all conversations concerning my account are in chinese. So when I got the transfer info with an address instead of a routing number, I questioned the teller and was assured that the address was sufficient. I thanked the teller and left.

The next morning at 6am I called up the US bank to catch them before closing and setup the wire transfer. I was politely informed that the wire transfer desk closed at 130pm and it was now 3pm. That night at midnight I called up the US bank and attempted to setup the wire transfer. I provided the bank with the information from the bank of china, acc number, wire code, and address. I was told I needed a routing number. I said they dont have a routing number, they use their address instead. No good. I called up bank of china customer service and asked to speak with an english speaking rep. The english rep didnt really 'speak' english. She said some things in english and then waited for a select list of memorized responses or questions. My query was not on her list and she was utterly confused. The conversation resembled one you might have had with a computer.

Please say your name
me
I am sorry I couldnt understand you. did you say justin?
no
please say your name
me
I am sorry I couldnt hear you.
me
did you say johnson?
no
Please speak your selection 1 for acc summary, 2 for ....
customer service
Transferring you to loans and credit
no!
If you would like a car loan say car loan, if you would like a rate quote...
No, Customer service....

After about 10 minutes of trying to explain what a routing number was, I hung up and called again, this time speaking to a chinese rep. Still failing to both explain what a routing number or obtain one. The chinese rep, just as the teller had done, assured me that only the address was needed and that she had no idea what a routing number was.

The next day I returned to the bank of china branch and again failed at obtaining a routing number. At midnight I called the US bank and again tried to explain that routing numbers were unavailable and wire transfers in china only use addresses. Still unable to wire money, the rep said they would have a manager call me back with info on how to transfer money without a routing number. Progress! I got a message two days later telling me to provide the bank with my account number, wire code, and routing number. Failure!

That night I called the bank of china, ny branch office and talked to someone who not only spoke and understood english, but also knew what a routing number was and gave me one. Finally real progress. I called the US bank and gave them all the info. Wire transfer on the way.

A couple days later the bank of china calls my cell phone and tells me (in chinese) they have received a wire transfer with my account number, but the name on the wire transfer does not match the name on my account. The wire transfer is for a me cxxxx. not a me axxxx cxxxx like my account. I explain that in the us, middle names are not important, and that my us bank doesnt even know my middle name. She doesnt buy it, and says the bank of china cannot accept the transfer. I guess this is some sort of international anti-money laundering/illegal transfer protection.

That night I call up the US bank and relay my conversation with the bank of china. The rep says they used whatever name was on my account and that i would need to come in to add my middle name, or fill out some paper work and mail it back to them. I elect for the paperwork option, and resign myself to not getting a wire transfer anytime in the next month. After I hang up, out of curiosity i check my account online. Magically it has my middle name listed. I immediately call back and get the same rep. I tell her my middle name is on the account and ask why it wasnt included on the wire transfer. She says middle names are not used, unless the customer specifically requests it. How was I to know? After speaking with a manager, the bank agrees to send out a new wire transfer with my full name at no additional charge as soon as the old one comes back. So now I wait for the new transfer to come through. Maybe next week, the bank of china said it might take 2 weeks to clear once they receive it. Banks are fun.

Other options for setting up a chinese bank account include things like going to the atm every day drawing the max, then carrying the wad across the street to the bank office and depositing it. I could also use travelers checks or western union and go downtown to the main office, trade the paper for US dollars, then goto another bank and convert the money to RMB, then go and wait in an enormous line to deposit it, or come back across town with the wad and deposit it my local bank after waiting in a much smaller line.

City Tour

2008-07-28T21:53:00.002+08:00

I have been tromping around Harbin for two weekends now. This weekend will make three. The first weekend was rather disappointing. The second weekend was fruitless. Harbin appears to be very functional, full of concrete, and devoid of character, at least in the summer. In the winter the city is supposed to come alive with snow and ice sculptures illuminated from within. Also known as ice lanterns.
Its not that Harbin is terrible, it is just lacking the street life and vibrance I was expecting. On the upside I did find a nice forest park to walk around in, excellent meat sausages, and potential t1bet1an food.
The contrasts between china and the US are numerous and striking. Who would have guessed? Lets start with physical appearances. Chinese people look Chinese. More than that many are rather slim or skinny. Actually most of the Chinese females are rather thin and many of the males are rather portly. The size difference between the sexes is striking. Also the shear frailness of the women. I had been thinking about how strange the size contrast was for several days when I asked my roommate. His response was that many women diet, constantly. I was astounded to hear this, although it does seems to make sense (check out the bellies on some of the guys). Widespread dieting is not confirmed, and I am not about to go around asking every thin girl.
There are several portly men, as i mentioned. Whats even more interesting is that it is currently summer and their bellies get hot. To cool off the belly, you simply pull your shirt up uncovering your belly and go about your business as if everything is normal or you are super proud of your protruding flesh.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/CityTour

I also went to a lake and some sand hole for a picnic this weekend.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/Daqing

Population

2008-07-25T18:12:00.003+08:00

One of my teachers provided a interesting insight into the current population size. She summed it up in two of the famous Chinese four character phrases. The first translates as 'more kids, more happiness.' This has had clear effects. However it would be interesting to investigate historical population growth. I'd bet there was a turning point where population growth became exponential. The second phrase translates as 'males are important, females are unimportant.' She gave an explanation for the clear sexism. Traditional when a couple marries the bride moves in with the groom's family in their family compound. As parents grow old, their children take care of them, except if there children were all daughters and married away to other houses. This system has even an greater impact when the parents are limited to one or two children by law.

kareoke

2008-07-24T19:29:00.001+08:00

I found a music video for one of the songs we sang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEXLcmfKDIg&feature=related

翻译Translation

2008-07-22T21:08:00.003+08:00

Some of the following sentences are translated semicorrectly。　By semicorrect，I　mean you should be able to divine the intended meaning from the mess of English grammar. The Chinese sentences are my originals and google provided the english translations.

U.S. Olympic athletes great, more and more access to the gold medal.
France's Olympic athletes are lazy, less and less access to the gold medal.
美国的奥运会选手很棒，获得的金牌越来越多。
法国的奥运会选手很懒惰，获得的金牌越来越少。

Russia on the construction of Harbin have great impact.
The United States on the war on the Iraqi people have a good impact.
俄罗斯对哈尔滨的建筑有很大的影响。
美国的小大战对伊拉克人有很好的影响。

In the United States on the Iraq war on oil-related.
Western consumption and the development of China-related.
在伊拉克美国的小大战于石油相关。
西方的消耗量与中国的发展相关。

Than listen to her mother's words is more important to have assertive.
Comparable to the well-being is more important to other people's happiness.
比听妈妈的话更重要的是有主见。
比拟的幸福更重要的是其他的人的幸福。

T-shirts

2008-07-22T19:38:00.002+08:00

There are some good ones here. For example: Today in pronunciation class I was having a hard time concentrating. The main reason was the two silver gothic crossed dangling from our teacher's shirt. Secondary reasons were the bizarre creepy angel's and demons flying around her. Additionally there were some words. In big stylized letters on the front "Paradise Chick" and in smaller letters on the back "Pure feelings come from heaven; Angels will bring us feelings; Would you follow the voices from the sky?"

Another winner from today was a white form fitting job with big letters made from silver sequins. The letters spelled "I heart Cookie" The word cookie stretched all the way across.

Maybe this weekend I will find some new shirts of my own.

Monsters and KTV

2008-07-20T09:50:00.008+08:00

Our pronunciation teacher is rather strict. Class time is filled with lots of wrong，no，try again，no，listen to me, no , again, again, again, no, wrong, etc.

The other day after class I was walking down the hall with a classmate. Our teacher was approaching us from the other end of the hall. As we neared, 30ft to go, we notice her begin to stutter-step and cower against a wall eyes blinking frantically. There was something near the ceiling approaching her, and she was scared. It flew closer. She gave a scream and made a full retreat. It was a butterfly. Seeing her cower before the pretty butterfly was quite the contrast to pronunciation warden we had experience just 10 minutes prior.

Last night we went out for dinner with a Chinese student group. I didn't catch the name of the group, but their purpose is to welcome and entertain foreign students. It was great fun. We left at 5 for a hot pot restaurant near campus. Hot pot is exactly what it sounds like. A great big pot set in the middle of the table kept hot by a charcoal fire. Various meats, vegetables, and fungus are then ordered to put in the pot. The pot is filled with water and a few spices and let to boil. Once boiling, you just start putting food in and taking food out. Most things are cut thin and only take a minute to cook. We had lamb, beef, 6 types of mushroom, various root veggies, tofu or different sorts and some greens.

Hot Pot and Korean BBQ are two types of restaurants were you do all the cooking, right on your table.

Around 7 we left for the infamous KTV. There are KTV's throughout China and similar enterprises throughout asia. KTV is a karaoke joint. This one was particularly dark and shady. After entering the door we were met by four KTV employees wearing white dress shirts, black slacks, and CIA earpieces. The room was very dim and there was loud music. After price negotiation, we were led down an even darker stairway with a low ceiling to the dark basement. The basement had approximately 15 equally dark rooms with mirrored walls, couch space for 10, two mics, flatscreen tv, touch screen karaoke control, and strobe light. We entered our room, the door closed, and thus began the next 5 hours.

It was quite fun to watch and hear the chinese students sing. Some were quite good. It was also interesting to hear lots of chinese music. After 5 hours of chinese music, and confidently say love is the primary theme, seconded only by the desire to find love and marriage. All the songs were rather serious and very heartfelt. It made for a rather emotion experience. Since it was a karaoke place, there was a tv. One the tv were the words to songs and also music videos to go with the songs. Most were dramatic and involved a young man and a young women loving one another, but more often feeling heartache over being separated or lonely.

It didnt take long for me and Tony to get dragged into the fun. There were english songs too! Oh boy. I dont have much singing practice, nor am i familiar with the random assortment of pop songs from the 70's-90's that was available. Tony and struggled through several rather poor songs that we had never heard before, or mistakenly heard on the radio. I dont remember most, didnt recognize most, but Ricki Martin and Richard Marx come to mind. Also a song called Venus that went something like "Im your venus. im your fire. im your desire." What i would have given for hips dont lie.

dress shirt and slacks. She just ran around, chewed gum, smiled at the camera, was chased by the camera, pretended to swing a baseball bat, and was If the english music selection was appalling enough, the music videos that went with the songs would do anyone in. The videos were not the originals. They involved 1 or 2 white foreigners, shot mostly in the US. One video simply had a women dressed in a baseball cap, oversized mensudderly ridiculous for the duration of the song. The song had nothing to do with baseball, or this ridiculous woman. Another video had a man with a rather unattractive bush of neck hair escaping the neck of his t shirt. The man ate a popsickle, waved a sparkler around, and held a rose. The video was shot using green screen, which was replaced with hideous 80's stlye neon color kaleidescopetry. The ricky martin video consisted a women wearing very short cutoff jean shorts and some tight top. She just posed on a porch and next to a motorcycle for the video. At least the motorcycle had BC plates.

I felt pretty bad as "cultural ambassador." The american movies (although there weren't necessarily even shot, produced, or of Americans, the association was clear) were appalling poor. Not only that, but in comparison to the heartfelt emotional chinese videos, the american videos were outright embarrassing. I am not saying the original videos or even other american music videos are good, but that the representation of american culture these videos gave was depressing.

Nevertheless it was fun. Just picture me singing Ricky Martin Livin la vida loca.
http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/ktv

地址和手机号 Address and Number

2008-07-18T10:21:00.002+08:00

For mailing both labels are required. If you send something, expect some strange and interesting thing sent back.

Jason Clark #408
CET Program
Harbin Institute of Technology
No. 6 Dormitory
Harbin, Heilongjiang Province 150001
People’s Republic of China

Cell
086 13796 033047

if you want to talk we can set up a time. there is a quite a big time difference and i am in class most of the day.

开始学习Studies begin

2008-07-14T19:14:00.001+08:00

First day of class....and the homework begins. Endless hours of repetition, memorization, and practice.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/StudiesBegin

香庐山 Xianglu Shan Big Incense Pot Mountain

2008-07-13T07:52:00.003+08:00

This last weekend we went for a mountain climb. Mountain climbing exactly taxing. There were nice wide paths, paved in places and the mountain was more like a small friendly hill. Nevertheless it was great fun, mostly because there was a big rain storm.

The place was crowed as most places in china are. Tourists (chinese) abound complete with camera's and picnicking gear. It took a little over an hour to get the top. There were about 10 foreigners in the group (including me) and we got plenty of looks and people talking about us. The talkers would preface whatever they said with "they dont understand (chinese)". Some engaged us in conversation with "what country are you from?"

Once we got to the top and had some lunch the downpour began. Luckily for us the way down was not the well manicured upward route, but rather a much steeper slick muddy one. I thoroughly enjoyed sliding down the muddy hill just like it was snow and ice. Others disliked being wet and muddy and having precarious footing. It was great fun. There should be more mountain climbing and mud skiing in the rain.

pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/XiangLuShan

到了 Arrival

2008-07-10T20:03:00.002+08:00

I am here! I got in last night around 10pm. Not too bad of a trip overall. Around 30 hours of travel.
On the flight from the US to Beijing 北京 the guy behind me had an epileptic seizure. I was reading my book when he started making some groaning noises and shaking violently. The people next to him didnt do anything so I went and got the stewardess. We eventually found a doctor. It turned out he had forgot to take his meds. The flight was late getting into beijing and I missed my flight to Harbin. Air China was very easy to work with, even in chinese, to get a new ticket for later last night. After being had for an extra $5 dollars by the taxi driver and accidentally going into a girls dorm, I made it to my new home for four months.

It is a 10x10 concrete white box with two beds and two desks. I share a bathroom with 3 others. I met my roommate today. He is a history major from Xian, the city with the terracotta warriors. His name is Song Lai Long. I also went through some bureaucratic processes to get internet in my room and get a meal card for the cafeteria. Both involved no less than 5 separate forms and at least two large red stamps.

When walking back from the store after purchasing a new blue plaid bath towel I happened to pass a young lady wearing a teeshirt with english words on it. At first glance it looked like a Nike shirt, but upon further inspection it turned out to say "just do me" followed by at least 20 other statements. I was only able to read two, "just grab me" and "just kiss me." I wonder if she had any idea. I also wonder what the other 18 said.

I was up at 3am this morning. Now it is 8pm and I am pretty tired. Tomorrow I get my class schedule and Saturday we are going for a hike.

The Adventure Begins

2008-07-07T01:50:00.000+08:00

July 8th 2008 - August 26th 2009

Chinese Forest Adventure

New Cell Number

New address

Hong Kong and Shangri-la

Motorcycle trip across western Sichuan and NW Yunnan

DAY TWENTYONE

DAY TWENTY

DAY NINETEEN

DAY EIGHTEEN

DAY SEVENTEEN

DAY SIXTEEN

DAY FIFTEEN

DAY FOURTEEN

DAY THIRTEEN

DAY TWELVE

Tree and Mushroom Investigation, Part 3

Tree and Mushroom Investigation, part 2

DAY ELEVEN

DAY TEN

DAY NINE

DAY EIGHT

DAY SEVEN

DAY SIX

DAY FIVE

DAY FOUR

DAY THREE

DAY TWO

DAY ONE

The Mouthes of Jason & Casey

Motorcycling Yunnan

Drivers Test

1.1.1.11 驾驶人在 可以驾驶机动车。

1.1.1.11 The driver may drive a motorized vehicle __________________.

Tree and Mushroom Investigation

Editing

Updates

The Great F1rewall

Steak House

Updates

Kunming

Forest Visit

New Address

New pictures!!!

Winter break

Trains and First Forest Visit

The Adventure Begins...

english class

Housing

Snippets from the last week or so…

Dinner Extravaganza

Ice, Carrot, and Ultrasound.

More cold

new address

Winter

week one and counting

Forestry Uni here we come

Snow

Air pollution

Voltage

One week and counting

Veggies

Tigers and Lamb(s)

Slow like a mushroom

Fire! Detector

Chinese Wedding

A sky filled with paper scraps and plastic bags

Thank you, Driver for considering our safety

Fire response

Air Raid Siren

Snippets from the last week

Motivation

Return from the south

Eastern Russia

olympic regulations

Olympics!

Olympics TV

olympics

Things Ｉ dont yet understand

Clarification

What is china? What is america?

1.1.1.11 驾驶人在可以驾驶机动车。