Ms. Lemon

That's my new nickname (usually just "lemon", without the miss).

So to explain a bit- I came back to China to chaperone a trip that was organized by DCIS, my alma mater and former employer. I went to visit a few teacher at the school when I was home last summer and during a lovely brunch at Racine's, Cathy (one of my former teachers) and I
started talking about China. When she found out that I would be in China in the fall she insisted I talk to Melanie, who was organizing the trip- Cathy had been offered the chaperone gig, but didn't think she could do it and thought it would be perfect for me. I talked to Melanie and got the details- the trip would be three weeks long, two of those weeks in Kunming, Denver's sister city, where we would stay in host families and some of my expenses would be paid. All I had to do was meet them in Shanghai and be a responsible adult. The group was small, only 4 high school students (all of whom I knew well from when they were in 6th grade) one DU student who decided to tag along (who I also know fairly well) and Mel. The kids are great and require very little in the way of actual supervision and I would get a plane ticket home- sounds like a deal to me!

It has been a great deal so far. During the day we go to classes put on for us by the high school we are visiting (Kunming Foreign Language School). With the exception of Chinese Language, which is way over my head, the classes are great. We've learned a few Chinese songs and arts. The kids are having a great time with their host families as am I. I think the kids Chinese skills will have improved a great deal by the time they get home and I think my skills will have improved by more than 100%- from two words to maybe five :-).

I don't quite remember where the "lemon" moniker came from- probably some mispronunciation of my name by someone, but I think I like it- the Chinese pronunciation also seems to sound a lot like my actual name, so I think I'll have someone teach me the characters and just run with it. That's Ms. Lemon to you. . .

Chinese food

In the first two weeks I was in china I didn't have very much in the way of "authentic" Chinese food. It's hard when you are traveling alone to find good places and because Chinese food tends to be family style, when you are without a family to eat with, fast food is sometimes just an easier option. As a solo traveler, I found China to be a lot like Italy- you know there is good food everywhere if you just had a local to show you where it is!

Luckily, on his last leg of my trip with the DCIS students, I am staying with a host family (an English teacher) and have been taken out to eat many times. Also, the food that my host has cooked at home has been wonderful. Even the school lunches have been better than the Chinese food I found on my own.

Besides fast food, the chinese take on "western food" is sort of funny. My first host (I had to move because her father got sick and she needed to take care ofhim) was extremely worried about what I would eat. She bought a hilariously huge loaf of mediocre plain white bread- I was too polite to tell her that I didn't really like it. Even my second host, who has been to America and understands me a little bit better worried ceaselessly about what I was eating (especially for breakfast). Twice this week we were taken by the school principal to what he described as a "western style restaurant ". It turned out to be a sort of buffet with waiters roaming around
with various types of meat skewered on large swords. I think I would rather eat traditional Chinese food (although eating jello with chopsticks was fun). I love how the Chinese family style works. Depending on how many people you have, you order a ton of dishes (usually a few more than there are people) plus rice and soup and it goes on a rotating platter in the center and everyone grabs things as they go by. I love this because with a big enough group you are always
guaranteed to have a few things you like. I think, maybe because you tend to grab things just a few bites at a time, you tend to eat less this way (at least I think I do), but you also never leave the table feeling hungry. My favorite thing so far has been "hot pot"- basically there is a pot of hot soup that is set on a hot plate on or in the table. You order different meats, vegetables and noodles and then put them into the hot pot to cook. Then everyone reaches in with their chopsticks and grabs what they want (or what they can). All of this family style eating has really improved my chopstick skills. I was not too bad before as we used to practice with our Chinese take out lunches at school, but now I can even eat rice noodles with chopsticks, which is no easy task.

Karaoke

Last weekend I was invited to a weekend trip with a group of teachers to a hot springs in a town a few hours away. It seemed to be a bonding trip for the group of teachers that all teach one grade (junior 3, equivalent to about 9th grade). We started out on Saturday midday and after a lunch stop arrived in the early afternoon. After a short rest, everyone headed to the indoor pool to swim and relax. It was quite nice, with a few large pools of different levels and a wet and dry
sauna. Neither of the two English teachers I was with knew how to swim, so we had a funny afternoon while I (along with the PE teacher and some others) tried to teach them, without much success. The other highlight of the afternoon was the awkward match making that was
attempted by some of the teachers between me and the chemistry teacher, who was not bad looking and seemed sweet, but didn't speak any English and even though he was a chemistry teacher- I didn't feel any.

After dinner everyone split into two groups, one for karaoke and one for mahjong. I really wanted to play mahjong, and they even let me play one hand before they kicked me out to get down to the real business of playing. I think they thought it was cute- they played really fast, not like my friends. I probably could have caught up after a few hands. I was glad I went to watch anyway, since I saw the coolest thing ever- a self dealing mahjong table. A disk in the center of the table rises up and you push all the tiles into a drum below the table. The drum mixes the tiles and pushes them into slots, then the tiles rise up in perfect rows onto the table to form the wall. Magic!!! Anyway, they started to really play and I left, time for karaoke!

If you have ever done karaoke in Asia, then you know it is different than we do it at home. Instead of having to perform for the whole bar, you and your friends rent out a small room and you sing just for each-other. In a lot of ways this is better as people are leas nervous, but you do miss out on the great opportunity to make fun of strangers. . .

When we arrived the singing was already in full swing. A few of the group had great voices, a few didn't, but everyone had fun. One of the girls figured out how to find the English songs on the computer and I stated to look through them. I found what I expected- mostly. There was Madonna, Brittney, MichealJjackson- there were a few other random songs- they somehow convinced me to sing "My heart will go on". My big surprise came when I was scrolling through and saw a familiar title "Handlebars". I was overly excited and confused the Chinese teachers a
lot by trying to explain that I know the band. In fact there were two Flobots songs on the list and I (tried to) sang both of them. I had more success with Handlebars than with Rise since I know the rap part better (mostly on Rise I only know the "rise" chorus part). I asked one teacher to take my picture while I sang, but she was very confused (later I was able to explain why I wanted my picture with the video behind me). I'm still a little confused as to why there would have been two Flobots songs on the karaoke machine at a hotel at a hot springs in rural China- there are tons of English songs that are more famous or more popular that were not there, so I think that it must just be fate- whoever programed the machine is a Flobots fan, which is kind of awesome.

The prettiest part of China

After so many people in Beijing and Xi'an (not to mention all the pollution) the countryside near Guilin was a welcome respite. I had heard from multiple sources that this was one of the prettiest parts of the country. It did not disappoint. From the "dragons backbone" rice terraces to the strange and beautiful hills along the Li river, it was a gorgeous place. I only wish I had more than three days.

On the first day I went with a Dutch girl that I met in the train station (and who saved me from having to sit in a hard seat for 27 hours by letting me sleep in her bed for a few hours on he train!) to the rice terraces. We decided to take the four to six hour (according to the guide

book) hike over the mountain from one side of the area to the other. I imagine that you could make the hike in four hours if: you didn't stop at all to eat or take pictures, you were in really good shape and you didn't get lost. We did not meet any of these conditions. It took us more like six hours. Six hours and fifteen minutes. We started at about 11:00 and arrived at about

5:15. Unfortunately for us the last bus left at 5:00. Darn those extra fifteen minutes! We got a taxi to the next town where we barely (by literally getting out and running to the bus) we did catch the last bus back to Guilin. Even with this rush at the end, it was a great day. The rice terraces were fantastic and nearly empty- just what I needed after the crush of people in Beijing and Xi'an. I had a great time with Soenita, one of the few single female travelers I've met on this trip (in Asia anyway- I met lots more in Europe). We had a great conversation about traveling solo (among many other topics over six hours). Neither of us probably would have taken this hike on our own and it was nice to have someone to talk to.

On the second day I took a bamboo raft down the Li river to the town of Yangshuo. Here, I rented a bike for my most successful bicycle outing yet- a ride in the countryside. I passed bemused (or confused) villagers and almost no other tourists. Unfortunately my time was too short as I arrived in the afternoon and didn't want to be caught alone in the country after dark- especially since I figured out later that I had been traveling down a completely different road than I had originally intended (I apparently have very little sense of direction. I blame this on growing up in Colorado- it was too easy there: mountains=west). If I could go back and replan my trip a bit, I would have spent more time in this area and at least two nights in Yangshuo itself. As it was I only spent an afternoon there and headed back to Guilin in the evening.

I spent the third day taking it easy in Guilin. Like it's surroundings, the city of Guilin is a gem. With the river winding through town, an easy walking center and randomly beautiful hills, the only downside was that you had to pay to enter the parks (I didn't bother).

In the evening, I caught an overnight bus to Shenzhen, the city on the Chinese side of the Hong Kong "border". The bus was interesting- instead of seats, it had three rows of bunk beds running the length of the bus (maybe 24 beds in all?). The beds were not enclosed and left little room for rolling over- a strange experience, but much better than a hard seat!

Lost and found

An inevitable part of travel is losing things. When you are packing up and changing locations every few days a few things left behind or misplaced are inevitable. Unlike when you lose things at home it can be hard to find them again since usually by the time you figure out that whatever you lost was missing you have moved on to the next place. I had been doing pretty well on this trip, as far as I can remember I didn't lose anything important from Albania to Colorado. In Russia the only thing lost was a Russian phrase book, which although I would have liked to keep it, it wasn't really a big deal since I lost it right before I left Russia. But this week I lost three things that I'm upset a bit about. First, I got to Hong Kong and realized that when I did laundry in Guilin somehow a pair of my pants didn't make it back in my bag. I wouldn't have been too bothered if I had lost a t-shirt or pair of socks, but of all the items of clothing to lose, pants are the most annoying. First, they are the most expensive, these particular pants being REI travel pants with the zip off leg- not cheap. Second, while I have a few t-shirts, I only have two pairs of pants with me since in general they don't need to be washed as much and I can wear them a few days in a row. Third, I like most women I know usually have a hard time finding pants that I like and that fit me well. These were pants that I liked, that fit me well an were perfect for travel since they are lightweight, quick drying and become shorts (handy!). I emailed the hostel in the vain hope that they might have found them and can send them to me somehow (when I go back to China in a few weeks). I'm not holding out much hope.

The second lost item of the week happened in the Hong Kong airport. I lost my water bottle. I know what you are thinking "water bottle? Big deal!" but this one was kind of a big deal actually. It was an impulse REI purchase when I was home and it is a pretty cool bottle- it has an internal water filter, making any water you put in safe for drinking, but it is the same size and weight as your average nalgene. This means that all across Russia and Asia I was able to fill up my magic bottle from the tap (or well or stream, what have you) instead of buying bottled water every day. So I was not only saving money, but saving the planet too. The bottle probably already paid for itself in the bottled water that I didn't have to buy. I lost it somewhere between security and the plane. I know I had it at security because they made me dump out the last bit of water that was in it before I went through. I then clipped it to the outside of my bag. When I got on the plane I noticed that it was gone, but since I was already on the plane there was not much to be done. I asked the flight attendant to ask the gate agent to look around the boarding area, but they didn't see it. The funny thing is that the filter itself was not in the bottle (I had taken it out since hong kong water is good) but without the bottle, I can't use the filter!

The third thing I lost was completely my fault- I forgot to check to make sure that I put my leatherman tool (a gift from my friend Melissa to replace the pocket knife that I lost when we were in Romania last summer) into my checked baggage. In the airport in Manila it showed up on the x-ray but through some sort of magic sweet talk I managed to get through. But then it fell out of my bag sometime later (I think when my dad put my bag into the overhead compartment). It may still show up somewhere- I thought I lost it last year at Outdoor Ambassadors camp but it turned up a week later in another pocket of my backpack.

Usually when I lose things I'm only ever mad at myself, since usually it is my own fault (like forgetting my pants in the laundry room). I do believe that there is lost and found karma- I did spend five years working at a movie theatre benefiting occasionally from the lost and found gods (I once got a palm pilot that someone hadn't claimed after a few months). I just hope that someone deserving finds my lost stuff and appreciates it as much as I did.

UPDATE: the hostel found my pants! They will send them to me when I go back to China next month! If you ever go to China make sure to visit Wada Hostel in Guilin. It is probably one of the best hostels I've stayed at and it is in a really beautiful part of the country. And they have the best staff EVER!

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Biking in China- day two

Xi'an seemed like the perfect place to try again to bike around. My couchsurfing host, Tyler loaned me his bike for the day. It started out great- while busy, the streets are nowhere near as crazy as Beijing. Unfortunately, very early into my day I made a silly mistake by trying to pass a rickshaw and ended up hitting my handlebars and falling. I scraped my knee a bit and jammed two of my fingers in the fall. After a few minutes of self pity an a few tears, I picked myself up and dusted myself off and continued. Needless to say though, my heart (and hand) weren't quite in it for the rest of the day. I stopped not long after for some shopping and then sat in a park for another rest. I did manage to make it back to Tyler's house in one piece with no more incidents. When they say it's as easy as riding a bike, I don't think they were talking about bike riding in China. . .

Brave?

I met a colleague of my host, Tyler, in Xi'an- she took us out to dinner for my first "hot pot" experience. She kept telling me how brave she thought I was. This is something that I hear from a lot of people on my travels. I guess because I was traveling by myself, away from my friends and family in a strange country. I don't really think of myself as "brave". Is riding the train across two continents or biking through the Chinese countryside alone brave? Some would call it brave, I suppose that some would call it stupid and I just call it beautiful and fantastic. I don't think of what I am doing as brave because I have always seen travel as exciting and normal, not usually dangerous. And now more than ever before, I think you have to be even less brave to travel alone because it is so easy.

In the morning on a boat floating down the Li river outside Guilin I had a discussion with an Australian guy who is traveling from Australia to Europe by land and sea. We talked about how the Internet had changed so much about travel. Just a few years ago, you had to rely on guidebooks for info, which could be incorrect or out of date. A few years before that there weren't even very many reliable guidebooks for many places. Other than this, you had tourism centers and travel agencies or just randomly arriving at a hostel. Now it is all different. You can go on one of several websites (I like hostelbookers.com) and look at lots of options with price comparison and reviews of guests. I almost never arrive at a destination without a prior reservation and all the info I need about where I'm going. In fact it is actually becoming harder to travel in a new way- it is easier to travel, but harder to have an adventure.

Last year I read a few books by Paul Thereux in which he traveled long distances mostly by train including across Europe and Asia and then back on the trans-Siberian in "The Great Railway Bazaar" and a year traveling China by train in "Riding the Iron Rooster". His world was a completely different place than the one I am traveling in. When he was in China, he was escorted by a government "tour guide" and struggled vainly to leave him behind and travel on his own. Now independent travel in China is easier than ever with many places geared towards the young, independent backpacker with hostels, cheap tours and English speaking staff. I was, in fact, a bit nervous about traveling alone in China, much more so than I had been about going across Europe and Russia by myself since I do speak (enough) Russian and knew I could get by in a pinch. China has been harder, since Chinese is harder and not too much is translated, but so far I haven't had too much trouble. The biggest issue I've had so far was my hard seat train tickets and I don't think knowing Chinese would have helped me too much (only a few million less people or not coming to china on a holiday would make a difference there).

I'm not really sure what "brave" is. I'm adventurous maybe, curious for sure. But mostly I'm just trying to see the world. . .

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Hard class

I meant to book a sleeper, but I somehow ended up with a "hard seat". On the wrong day and to the wrong station (right city, just outside of town). My lesson learned from this- check three times that they understand what you want- even when you think that the person you are talking to speaks English . . . and don't try to travel in china during a national holiday.

So a "hard seat," not a sleeper and therefore, no sleep. Just me, one other American guy and about 100 Chinese people for 15 hours. The other American guy abandoned me to check out the dining car- he heard that if you slip the attendant a few bills they will let you stay there overnight. By the time I got uncomfortable enough to join him, the dining car was locked and any chance I had was gone. So I contorted myself into a somewhat comfortable position just like all my hard seat companions. On the bright-side, I did have a seat- when we left Beijing there were people standing and sitting in the aisles, although it seemed that most of these people had somewhere to sit by morning. This train continued on for another 18 hours to Chengdu and I just can't imagine another night like that. While the Chinese trains are certainly cheaper, I appreciate the Russian trains- I don't even think it is possible to just have a seat (no bed) on trips longer than 12 hours.

If there are no sleeper compartments available for my next section (24 hours to Guilin) I think I might just fly . . .

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The great wall and all that jazz

(yep, that's me on the Great Wall)

What can you say about the Great Wall, really? Didn't they kind of say it all when they named it "Great"? I decided to take a tour offered by my hostel that would go to the "secret" wall- a part hopefully not covered in tourists and crawling in souvenir stalls. They delivered on the promise and we arrived at a beautiful section of the wall not far from the most touristy bit (with the cable car up and slide down) that was only partially restored and beautifully empty. It also turned out to be a fantastic day with relatively clear skies (only a mild pollution haze) and you could see quite a way in every direction.

It was a fun trip, I spiny most of the day hiking with a pair of British sisters who are English teachers not far from Beijing and in the city for the holiday. There is not much to say except that we climbed up, walked for a bit, took pictures walked back and climbed down. Climbed the Great Wall- check.

Travel in big cities (and any major tourist destination) often feels like a rather endless series of checklists: Great Wall- check, Summer Palace- check, Temple of Heaven- check, Chinese acrobats- check, etc. I feel like I try not to just "do" the checklist, for a lot of reasons. One, I can't really afford it; if I did everything listed in the Lonely Planet, I would be completely broke by now. I think, also that the best times I've had on this trip have been when I got off the checklist- usually with couhsurfers and PCVs. For me it is somehow easier to skip some of the attractions if I have someone to walk around town with- and when I do see things, it doesn't feel quite so listy since I'm sharing it with someone.

Anyway, checked off a lot of things from the list in Beijing. . . Up next, something that has been on my list for a long time: Terra-cotta warriors in Xi'an!

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Blocked

I had heard that there were a few websites (most importantly for me- facebook) that were blocked in china. I also heard that there were ways to get around the blocking. So far I haven't been able to do that since I don't know how to get a proxy server on my iPod. I imagine I'll be able to use someone computer over the next few days to get to all the banned sites. Shh. I won't tell if you won't.

When I arrived in Beijing I found two more important sites blocked- blogger and wikipedia. Blogger is a problem for obvious reasons- while I have been using e-mail publishing on my blog since I got my iPod (because I can draft a post when offline) I still had to log on to actually publish the post and this is not possible here. I thought the fact that wikipedia was blocked especially ironic since they have this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

I presume that they are listed, but I don't know since I can't open the page to check it out. If not someone should update it. :-).

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When in Rome . . .

(me with my bike in a park in Beijing)

Or rather when in China, do as the Chinese do. . .

After spending my first day in Beijing walking and finding that the crowds were terrible and the distances long, I took the advice of the guidebook and rented a bike from my hostel for the day. Although there are still plenty of bikes on the Beijing streets, cars are more and more common, making traffic pretty horrible and becoming more dangerous for the bikers. Now, I haven't ridden a bike in years and between that and in general being a bit out of shape, I started out slow. Of course I couldn't really start out too slow since I had to get through the traffic in central Beijing around Tienanmen square right off the bat- surviving that, I made my way along some of the bike roads and hutongs (alleys) north to the drum and bell towers. I had fun exploring Beijing this way, but it was very stressful and there were several times that I had to dismount in order to get through big crowds and not run over small children or grandmothers. I managed to make it back to my hostel in the afternoon without getting hit by a bus and without hitting any pedestrians (at least not hard). I was sore and tired and happy to be in one piece.

While it is certainly faster than walking, I don't really see myself as a "bike" person. My friends Chris and Courtney are taking a several month bike trip through the middle east right now and while I love reading about their trip and it seems like they are having a great time, I just don't know if I could do it. I saw a lot of the people in Beijing zipping around on little motor bikes and scooters and I think that maybe I could do THAT. I am faced with the problem of transportation for when I get back to Denver in a few months. I would love to live without a car, but a few hinges make that hard- first as I plan on subbing for at least a few months, I will need flexibility that buses and biking just cant offer. Second, I'll be getting back in winter and a bike (or even a scooter) wouldn't be a reliable option for at least a few months. I guess I'll figure that all out when the time comes. . .