6/1 Good bye Beijing

I paid our small initial bar tab using Monopoly money, so technically I guess there's no record that we'd ever been to the Beijing Doubletree, except that they had our passport numbers. So did half of Beijing, by this point. Karen and I leisurely left the hotel at 6 am, the minimal traffic allowing our taxi to get us to the airport within about 45 minutes, a couple of hours before our scheduled departure. Security was routine, since we'd decided to check our two bags along with Alex's large suitcase of winter clothes (and some special gift items, which I was still concerned might cause interference with the jet's electronic equipment or, just as bad, cause a fire), making our only carry-ons our trusty backpacks. Four hours to Tokyo, and then six more sitting around the Tokyo airport. The 12 hour flight had been delayed for an extra hour due to "mechanical problems," since no air traveler would argue that it would make sense to ignore a warning light before take off. [We could just as easily have had an tragic experience near the Arctic Circle as apparently happened to an Air France jumbo jet in the Atlantic at about the same time as our flight.] The delay caused us to miss our connection in Detroit, but Northwest used surprising aptitude and rerouted us on a couple of other planes to get us (and our luggage) back to Tulsa before midnight. Again, I could have just said we left Monday morning and got in Monday evening. There can be such a distortion of truth in brevity.

Oh, and 300 or so more photos (many in high resolution) are available by going to my site, www.davegribbin.com and choosing "Galleries" and then "China" (or try the following quick link):

http://theatrearts.smugmug.com/gallery/8280957_bCTNK#556881408_kmHTp

Alex plans to upload all the fun cooking school photos for the benefit of our fellow students under "China Cooking" (hopefully soon). Just ignore the multiple hoses fanning out from the propane tanks.

I've tried to recount our adventure as clearly and completely as possible, and have not made anything up. I don't know if we left as good an impression on the hundreds of people we met in China as they did upon us, but I like to think we did. So I think we accomplished our mission to have fun, be happy, and make a difference. And everybody knows now what I think of the food.

5/31 Forbidden City all to ourselves

Although the Beijing sun rose at about 4:30, and it was fairly light at 6, we decided to sleep in a bit longer. It turned out we overslept until about 8, so we got a late start to go to Tsinghua University. The first cab driver declined to take us and we never could guess at the reason. It took a few moments to find a driver who agreed to take us. The traffic was awful, since many people had been expected to work on Sunday because, after all, they had all had a three day vacation for the Dragon Boat festival (which I discovered was an official holiday tradition for all of only two years). It was indeed celebrated more vigorously down south where we had been a few days earlier. The fare was high (Y61), since the written Chinese characters I'd given the driver for directions sent us to the wrong gate, again, and I called Alex and had her talk with the nice driver, who told me "That's cool" in English. Not being able to use simple phrases in the local language like "Sorry about that" or "Excuse me" or "How's it going" or "Where can I wash my hands" makes a person feel impotent.

We felt like we'd met the days expectations of us after checking in at the foreign student dorm's front desk and showing our passports (our passports had never been through such a rigorous two weeks as they did while we were in China). Alex was video conferencing with Jamie as we walked into her Apartment 644. It was Jamie's Saturday night at about 9 pm, and she was telling us about how she was handling being alone just fine until Amanda would be off work and home at about 2 am. I did a few quick things on e-mail and we grabbed a cab for the Olympic Park near the National Stadium (the Bird's Nest Stadium). The driver took us to the northernmost park entrance, which rarely was used by anybody, since the subway only ran to the southern entrance to the park. We were fine, because we'd hoped to be able to walk through the entire park, which only nine months after the Olympics was already beginning to be reclaimed by nature. It was very empty, something which could be rarely said about anything within Beijing's city limits. We explored a large deck overlooking a chain of interconnected ponds. As you'd expect to find in any part of the world, the koi heard us coming and all congregated near us in the hopes that we'd toss out a snack or two. A token older woman was performing tai chi in the shade behind us, and continued her ritual by the water's edge without word. It was wonderfully peaceful. As we walked southward, we did begin to see more people, mostly locals, who'd come to appreciate the varied flowering shrubs and trees. Several electric vehicles shuttled small groups from here to there, but the most memorable pair was a grandpa and his grandson strolling along with a fishing pole. He was singing a folksong in his most beautiful, loving voice as they walked over a bridge together, oblivious to the "foreign devils" watching them. I wish I'd pulled out the camera, but as had happened in so many other instances during our trip, I didn't want to intrude on something without a better understanding of its importance to my subjects. I've lost some great shots because of this sensitivity, but I feel good knowing why they went uncaptured.

After a bit of confusion (silly us, believing the park signage directing us to the south exit might be accurate), we successfully made our way past the much more grand southern entrance and the vendors (absent at the north gate) and after a few photos with the Bird's Nest Stadium as backdrop, entered the subway, still sparkling from its Olympic debut. We boarded our private car and I photographed through the open doors in each direction to the other sparsely occupied cars. In all, there may have been a dozen people on the 12:30 departure on Line 8 heading south. As Alex had warned us, that didn't last but a few stops, and by the time we'd transferred to two different lines, we'd been standing like sardines with the other thousands of early afternoon commuters. Alex wanted us to experience one of her favorite lunch places, even though it meant that we'd have to buy a few more subway tickets afterward to continue on, but we felt we could afford the additional 2 yuan. The featured treat was the "dessert" of purple rice stuffed into a hollowed out pineapple which capped off another of our very good stir fry meals. We never identified the intermittent mystery sound, which could have simply been the main burner from the kitchen stoves, but sounded more like a fire breathing dragon at an amusement park. Back on the subway, we rode to the Forbidden City / Tiananmen Square exit and started another marathon walk.

Alex amusingly kept track of each category of vendor as we were approached, again having reminded me specifically not to make eye contact or acknowledge them in any fashion. She walked with purpose past the menagerie to the innermost ticket booth, where we bought three tickets to enter the Forbidden City. We made for the national pottery collection, which was spectacular (the fact that it was air conditioned was an added bonus). I'd never seen as many six thousand year old vases and vessels which looked to be in such good shape. We lost track of time, and suddenly were faced with the fact that all would be closing in about 40 minutes. So we continued deeper and deeper into the realm of royalty, noting as we progressed the ubiquitous appearance of substantial thresholds, just like those we'd seen at every other archeological site in China. It seems the ancient Chinese didn't want to admit anybody who couldn't step over and clear an 8" wooden beam. Again, we felt eerily alone, for unlike even Alex's prior experience there, there were very few people within the Forbidden City (and later at Tiananmen Square, except for military sorts and a bunch of people who were likely plain clothes security people). The Forbidden City was virtually empty, with the exception of a couple of small tourist groups and a few stragglers like ourselves. [It reminded me of how Ghirardelli Square felt in March, 2003. We found very few people while on a visit there too. Turns out 450 Iraq war protestors had been arrested a couple of days earlier, so things had become very quiet in San Francisco. With the 20th anniversary of the uprising at Tiananmen on June 4, and recent media control and police supervision of the plaza by Chinese authorities, the explanation for how few people were there on May 31 might be self-evident.] We took photos as if we were private guests and didn't try to explain our good fortune. I'm hesitant to post the photos with my typical honest captions until Alex arrives home at the end of June.

Speaking of good fortune, did I mention how many lanes of traffic (4 of cars and 3 of buses and taxis) in each direction separated the Forbidden City and Tiananmen? [This was the fourteen lane street where the famous "tank man" stood to block passage of the army tanks.] Fortunately, there were pedestrian subways so that nobody had to cross the street, though pedestrian/vehicle challenges seemed to work safely everywhere else in China. We called Steven and needed to find a bus in order to meet up with him. After I noticed a dozen painted aisles on the sidewalk with (apparently) bus numbers for each lane, I suggested to Alex that we ask one of the many microphoned bus announcers standing at attention how we might best achieve our destination. She was very helpful, and before we could find the correct number on the sidewalk, we saw Bus 81 pulling in front of the many other buses curbside. We made a frantic dash to jump on, and conveniently I had a Y1 note for each of us. We stood all the way and luckily noticed that we'd reached our cross street, so we jumped off. Many of the conspicuous, large green and white street signs in this part of Beijing which Westerners might assume give you the cross street instead feature a vertical arrow which then indicates what street you are already traveling on. Upon reflection, it was a useful device for those of us who weren't sure if we were indeed traveling north or east. The signs for the cross streets were less noticeable, but I credit Alex for preventing us from taking the bus back to the Great Wall.

Alex wanted to walk along the north boundary of the Forbidden City in order to show us the moat which originally surrounded the entire complex (but was no longer visible from the main entrance). I couldn't help but imagine the multiple lines of defense which would have made a successful attack throughout most of history all but impossible. I pictured archers with powerful crossbows on top of the walls within the moat, and was fairly confident that few people had been crazy enough to even try to scale the smooth sides after a midnight swim. A couple of rickshaw drivers with broken, but decent, English tried very hard to convince us to hire them, but I remembered one of the few phrases Alex taught me and said "gwong y gwong" which elicited a laugh and him saying "Just want to stroll, huh?"

That was exactly what we wanted, so they let us pass. Near the midway point of the northern border we crossed the street, heading north again, up yet another street to the entrance to a great park where we met Steven, who had just ridden his bicycle from work. We entered the very popular park and were greeted first by a display of miniature Gingko trees, done bonsai style, in various shaped planters. As we gwong y gwonged, we passed a number of musicians, some sitting alone playing stringed instruments (the Chinese erhu) and others just singing away a capella. Three older men had their own karaoke set up and were leading a group of seventy or so older park guests in a patriotic song in memory of fallen soldiers, according to Steven. It was an example of another of the countless things that you just don't see any more in the US, except in old musicals starring Bob Hope or Bing Crosby. These people all had soft, melodic voices, which together had some volume, but not a one had the distinctive growl of Beijing Mandarin. We were a little discouraged that Steven wanted us to yet again climb more stairs to ascend to the top of the temple, from which all of Beijing could be seen. Apparently, when the moat around the Forbidden City was built, all the dirt was piled on top of an old Mongol conqueror’s tomb, thus creating this wonderful hill and another opportunity for future tourists to climb steps. It was another one of Alex and Steven's recommendations which was top notch. We got to see the sunset on an atypically clear day over the capital city, and got a bird's eye view to the south over the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.

We trekked back down, swearing once again that we would not climb any more tombs, walls, temples, or towers on this trip, and passed five older folks kicking a hackey sack badminton birdie back and forth as gracefully as dancers. They'd laugh at the person who infrequently missed the return or kicked it poorly. It was again very peaceful, and helped me to understand how this culture could make such a big deal about drinking some hot tea.

We found Steven's bicycle locked among countless others, and after kindly refusing more post cards and books (of which we never bought any), we walked towards the most anticipated dinner of our entire visit at the Hot Pot Restaurant which has a more formal name I can't recall. Lots of red and gold and wood and copper, and an entourage of Chinese businessmen entertaining a treasured guest donning a white suit, white shoes, and white beard, all of whom passed us on their way into the separate and very private dining room, right out of a Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre black and white film. The four of us each had what seemed to be our own personal waitress, each with a plastic embossed name tag with Chinese characters and then the English "No" and her number. [I'd grown to like the Anglicized names like "Sophie" or "Nancy" or "Wendy" or "Annabel" or "Jerry" which most of the service folk we'd met had adopted, and was a little offended that I'd have to ask Number 619 to again fill my tiny glass with beer from the bottle sitting right next to me or scoop fat from my individual copper bundt pot of boiling water which I'd been parboiling various offerings of meat, vegetables, fungi, and tofu.] But I still smiled at each of them, No one and all, since they too seemed so pleased to be doing their duties and attentive to our every need or desire. The crazy thing was that tips are not expected, nor does anyone seem to give them. The service comes because it's expected as part of the job. And they really seem eager to do their jobs well. I still can't answer if it's because of the culture, or because they know that there are probably ten more Chinese who would love to have their jobs if they don't do it well. But it was a good meal, and like all others we ate with Steven, we never left hungry. Steven insisted on picking up the tab, and after some hesitation, we graciously accepted. Turned out to be the one time in history that he underestimated the tab, but he refused to accept anything from us. So I like to think that I took care of the tip.

Steven also presented us with a wonderful parting memento, Natural China, a book of beautiful nature photography published by his own Nature Conservancy, to remember our time with him and with Alex. I'd often wondered, watching Steven and Alex walking on ahead of us during various times around Beijing, how things work---that Steven and Alex end up, if only for a brief period, on the other side of our planet to create memories together, in much the same way that Amanda's and Bryan's lives overlapped for a time in Portland. It made me wonder what coincidences might be held in our future and thankful for those that we'd already enjoyed. And I thought of how I'd been able to witness all of it so far, and realized that I needed to write about it as well as photograph it in an attempt to really get as much flavor out of it as possible. So I guess that's my excuse for writing so much about things which other people could probably have said more concisely. [Ironically, my journal of our trip to China might be the one time where I could have simply and appropriately said, "The food is good."]

Parting with Steven was easy because he looked so happy. He had matured into a really neat guy and one with whom I was very proud to have shared our lives. Plus, I knew he'd be visited in a few months by Bryan's family as well as his mom and Tom, and that we'd see him again over Christmas back in Tulsa. Parting with Alex was much more difficult, even though I knew we'd see her in just a few weeks. She came back to the Doubletree to see our room and to spend a little more time together, but both she and Karen started to get really tired really quickly. I walked Alex down to her taxi, a bit of small talk to delay saying the important things we really wanted to say, and then just as her tears had welled up, I was able to croak out how much I really loved her, which is easier to print on a Valentine's coffee cup than it is to say as you're motioning to a Chinese taxi driver to take away one of the most important gifts of your life. I knew it was futile, but I still assessed the cabbie and memorized his license number as she quickly climbed into the front seat and headed off into the darkness. But I also knew that if she could handle Beijing, she can handle anything which life might throw at her. It made the trip back to 1539 more manageable, and I felt good.

Depart Beijing

5/30 The Simatai section of the Great Wall is worth the risk

Alex was on Skype with a friend and kind of forgot that she said she'd come back to the hotel at 9 am. At 9:30, I called and learned that she hadn't yet left the campus. When she finally arrived, we met her downstairs, and less than five minutes later Steven appeared. We lounged a few minutes in the comfort of some high backed couches, and then set off in search of breakfast. It was a bit of a hunt, since the hotel was in a southwest part of Beijing not known for a plethora of restaurants. But Steven is very resourceful and found us an unmarked eatery. Since it was now closer to lunch time, and since he and I agreed that every Chinese meal goes better with beer, we called it lunch and ordered a whole lot of food and some beer. We struggled to find a driver willing to take the afternoon to take us to a remote section of the Great Wall, but as I said, Steven is resourceful. We negotiated the drive there (which we estimated as two hours), a couple of hours wait, and the return for an agreed upon price of Y650, more than we'd hoped but far less than most drivers were asking. The weather was in the mid-seventies and mostly sunny, and most importantly, the air was very clear. Our driver was friendly enough, made so by Steven sitting in the front seat visiting fluently with him. The trip up to the mountains was so restful and I felt like I'd become accustomed to seeing Chinese life, so I actually dozed off several times. Then I realized how irritated our driver had become because the area Steven had bargained for turned out to be a lot farther than the driver imagined. Steven was translating some of the comments made by the driver, and it was not sounding as hopeful as it had when we'd started out. We turned into an entrance and the driver called over to a guy standing in the middle of the road to come over. We determined that this was the road to one area of the Great Wall, and since the next entrance was 20km farther north, this would be the one we were taking, in spite of the fact that Steven wasn't altogether convinced that this was the one we had heard was so great. Nonetheless, as we approached, we saw hints that the portion of the wall to which we were headed was situated along some fairly majestic peaks. The dry, clear blue skies contrasted sharply with the mountains which, if they hadn't been so green, could have been an area northeast of Scottsdale. Of course, instead of pueblos were hutongs on the road leading up to the mountains. The driver let us off and agreed to be there when we came back, which we'd said would be around four o'clock. He'd demanded a rather substantial deposit, which Steven wisely cut in half after exchanging phone numbers.

We decided to take the lift up the mountain, so we bought one way tickets in addition to paying the entrance fees. Each car of the lift carried two people, so Karen and I jumped in first and Alex and Steven brought up the rear. There were not many people. In fact, as we were to soon discover, we'd come to a part of the Great Wall on a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon which featured more vendors than there were tourists. We couldn't believe our good fortune (except that each tourist became more highly sought by each vendor) as we climbed higher and higher toward the crest of the mountains. Unfortunately, the lift ended well before we'd reached the top, and we climbed an additional couple of thousand feet to reach the wall, being trailed by one mysterious vendor who shadowed us stair by stair for a majority of the climb. He’d stop and wait every time we stopped to catch our breath. Even having grown accustomed to Chinese sense of space, this began to grow on all our nerves. It became worse as he continued to follow us, lock step, as we explored many segments of the Great Wall. And I became frustrated at the fact that my ability to tell him how I felt was limited to hello, thank you, and the food is good. But just before I had decided to risk life and limb and push him over the wall into a Mongolian abyss, Steven talked with the man's wife, who had also joined us by this time and was trying to sell us the kinds of books, postcards, and other valuable commodities for which we'd purposefully traveled seven thousand miles and climbed seven thousand steps. He explained that we really were not in the market for anything except maybe a really cold beverage, of which there were none, so that the man's time would be better spent pestering the Europeans farther up the wall (which had been the solution which I'd suggested to Alex, that if any vendor approached me asking if I wanted a whatever, that I'd respond with a "No" but then point to a distant stranger and say something like "but Rolf, there, he's looking for a good tour guide" and then walk away). And it worked brilliantly. The guy finally left and we got to enjoy a desolate stretch of the Great Wall of China. Although, "enjoy" might be at times a euphemism for "almost die on" or "nearly fell to my death" on. We'd experienced steep risers and narrow steps throughout China, but now it was possible to fall to your death within a few steps to the right, to the left, and straight ahead of you. To make it even more exciting, a gale force wind from right to left greeted us as we emerged from every guard house, many of which looked like they'd been successfully battered by those same winds for centuries, and some were in such bad shape that we were forced to detour around them on a narrow path.

There were no other tourists here for a reason, it seemed. My knees and legs already ached, and I knew Karen felt the same. Unfortunately, I think even Alex and Steven were showing signs of fatigue (which reinforced the fact that we were pushing our aged bodies to their limit), and we weren't even sure as we walked for what seemed like miles down the wall that we wouldn't reach the separation between cliffs (where there was now a narrow rope bridge that I sure as hell was not going to traverse) and have to turn around and then climb all the way back up to where we'd started in order to then get back down to where the lift had dropped us. On the one hand, it was magnificent. On the other, I was wondering how many sets of tourist bones were scattered along those mountains which had gone unrecovered. [We later learned that a friend of Steven's had camped along the wall not far from here and had her entire bag, cell phone, passport, gear and all, blow off the wall and vanish, unrecoverable, far far below. Forever.] To add a relatively minor stress, it was 4:15 and we were still near the apex of the journey. But did that stop us from some fun photos? Heck no! We were still commenting on Steven's recent stellar performance at the Expat Show in Beijing, and asked him for some pointers on posing as a Chinese opera star (which he and a buddy had performed for two days to the delight of thousands of Chinese attendees---they were the hit of the show---see http://www.vimeo.com/4850005 and give it a moment to load). So we have various combinations of opera poses (and Dave as a Mongol warrior, though I think I look more Manchurian) on top of the Great Wall. No photo compared to Steven's opera debut, but we attributed that to the fact that they'd paid a guy 800 yuan to spend two days covering them with make-up in full authentic Chinese costumes (which Steven complained were not at all comfortable for a person of his height).

We eliminated any more photo shoots and purposefully forced ourselves to make better time going down. We estimated that if we were lucky, we'd get back to the drop off area at about 5 pm, and that the taxi driver might still be there, and if not, we might be able to find others to get us at least part of the way back. We marched. We stepped. Our calves and feet were burning, since the steps became so steep at times that the Chinese authorities actually installed the one and only safety device I'd seen on our entire trip to China, a steep steel ladder with handrails. Our spirits lifted after we confirmed that we were indeed on the correct route by talking with an English speaking pair who were climbing in the reverse direction. Our pace quickened, if only for a few steps, and then the pain returned. Poor Alex had worn flip flops, which caused us even greater concern. But we were making really good time and finally arrived at a side path which had just recently been completed and was populated by, you guessed it, lots of local vendors. A group of college kids were keeping the drink vendors busy, so we made our getaway. A short distance later, we saw a zip line which offered to whisk us most of the way down the trail for only Y40 each, but Steven and Dave felt that we'd already pushed our luck for the day. Karen more than Alex really wanted to show that she had faith in the Chinese safety commission and didn't seem to understand that this attraction was probably run by a relative of the guy who'd followed us morosely for thirty minutes just a while earlier. So we walked on, and were relieved after we saw that takers of the zip line trip were probably taken again at the bottom, since there was no trail out for them. They probably had to pay another Y40 each for the boat ride to shuttle them out to the park exit. In the alternative, they'd still be listening to the vendors' sales pitches.

Our driver was located via Steven's cell. He was in a particularly jocular frame of mind, given that we were over an hour late for our scheduled return. It seems he'd made a particularly clever purchase of some fish, and he'd made a friend of another taxi driver, and he'd probably found some rice wine, because he was just giddy and so pleased that he'd spent a beautiful afternoon in the mountains (which is what Steven told him to expect in the first place). We started back, and as he had done on the way up the mountain, displayed his propensity to pass slower vehicles both on the left and the right. We'd grown accustomed to beginning to pass a vehicle at the same point that Westerners would feel compelled to return to one's proper lane to avoid the unfortunate and often painful head on collision. Yet we survived in spite of odds stacked against us. Karen insisted that I stop taking photos from the car, because every time I had the camera out and was ready to click the shutter, the driver would turn and stare at me or at what I was going to photograph and not look at the road ahead of us. He did so regardless of our speed or the winding road, and probably would have even done so while passing, but I couldn't bring myself to test this theory. As it was, we hit over 180 km per hour on the tollway for much of the remote parts. My already taxed brain recorded that driving in a taxi at over 110 mph without a back seatbelt was another first for our family. It also provided examples for posterity of how difficult it is to navigate between slow moving vehicles, like trucks filled with oil, bricks, or stone, when the difference in relative speeds is over 70 mph and the trucks are perilously unaware of our approach from behind. Again, we just knew that somehow it would work and that we'd survive again. After all, we'd been kind to some of the sadder vendors. Steven had purchased some berries from a hard working older woman, and during our mountain return, even convinced the cab driver to pull over for us to buy apricots and cherries from a cart family on the side of the road.

The driver took us to another of Steven's favorite haunts, a place famous for serving up great lamb soup and something like fried lamb tacos. Steven had made history during one visit for eating a full meal and topping it off with five of the fried tacos. As we finished, several of his friends came in for dinner, so we had a chance to meet Andrew (Steven's cohort performing the previous weekend at the Expat Show), Austin, and Emily (broken foot cast recently decorated by her friends). We left, and Steven led us in the darkness through several alleys. I know it sounds strange, but if you can avoid the occasional nasty sewer and diesel exhaust smells, the rest of Beijing smells of mesquite wood burning and can be rather pleasant. After a bit, we suddenly emerged near the Bell Tower that Karen and I had gone up ten days earlier, so we started to get our bearings, the only difference being that Karen and I had limited our adventure to well lit main streets during the daytime. Steven preferred the back alleys at night. We passed our former hotel, The Bamboo Garden, and revisited the blind masseurs for a relieving foot and leg massage. Since they were unusually busy for so late on Saturday, the proprietor brought us each an oak bucket lined with plastic so that we could sit out in the alley and soak our feet in hot water, steeping with what resembled a tea bag. As soon as my blind young man finished massaging an elderly handicapped woman and the proprietor kindly carried her to her wheelchair, I let him work my feet with his knuckles and knead them until I passed out from relaxation. Karen did the same. I loved the fact that he spoke a few words of English, so that I could tell him my feet felt "Beautiful" and I didn't have to tell him in Chinese that "The food is good." We returned the empty bottles of beer which Steven and I had purchased to get the deposit back, and he walked us out to the main road so that Alex could catch her taxi and we could catch ours. Alex had left her cell phone in Karen's pocket, so her textbook departure was slightly marred by her having to literally run back down the street to us screaming before we too had entered the second cab. Although tired, Steven walked to his hutong since it was relatively close.

Explore the Forbidden City on important anniversaries

5/29 - Near death experiences getting to and leaving Guilin

We grabbed another nice breakfast at Kelly's Cafe, Karen going for the bacon and egg sandwich and Alex and I each getting another banana pancake with honey, fruit, juice, and coffee. "Wendy" stopped by our table to gently give us a hard time for not having called her for tickets to any of the nightly evening light shows on the river, which everyone had said was spectacular, but we saw as an opportunity for them to ritually sacrifice tourists to the mosquitoes and make a lot of money doing it. (I was getting confident in my newfound ability to actually distinguish various Asian ethnicities, as I'd recognized Wendy from two days earlier when she'd introduced herself while we were drinking Mojitos at Bar 98 and tried to get us to hire her as a local tour guide.) Then we returned to our Rosewood Inn, where we kind of knew it would be hard to say goodbye to the sweet staff. True to their word, they'd done everything they could to make our stay very pleasant and had exceeded our expectations, and Sophie even presented us with a gift box of rice wine, chili sauce, and pickled tofu as we departed. All I had to return the gesture was my well worn business card, but we planned on putting a package together to surprise the trio (together with Tracy, whom I'd repeatedly mistaken for Sophie, and new mom Annabel, whom I'd once embarrassed making small talk, asking how here five-month-old son was doing, to which she'd replied, "Did Sophie tell you about my son?" and I'd reminded her that she herself had during one of my other attempts at communication.) and writing an e-mail of thanks to Mr. Wong (the patriarch of several businesses on the block) as soon as we returned to the US. After all, they'd innocently introduced us and helped guide us to our favorite gifts which we'd picked up in Yangshuo, the tennis racket electric bug zappers. We took a nice group photo, and their final words of wisdom were to take the express bus to Guilin rather than the other bus, which was known for attracting loads of pickpockets on the dozens of stops between the towns. (So, about ten minutes later, we actually get on an empty bus and ride it two blocks until we determine that it is likely to become exactly the same type of bus of which we'd been forewarned). We found an actual bus station and purchased express bus tickets for the next departure, and instead of being robbed, got to enjoy a very early Jackie Chan film on the closed circuit television, which Alex and I at times really laughed hard at in spite of the fact that it was spoken and subtitled in Chinese and I still couldn't be certain who were the good and bad guys. We just knew every time Jackie pulled up his sleeve to expose his magic fist, a bad guy was going to be punched literally across the room or through a wall. Kind of like the thug sitting next to me on the bus, whom I'd determined was one of the latter. He had several cell phone calls during the trip (which should have been only one hour, but turned in to an hour forty-five, for although our bus didn't make stops, it had been passed by nearly every other vehicle on the road, including a three wheeler powered by a lawn mower engine). Every time he answered his cell, which had a uncharacteristic, attractive, delicate ring tone, he'd bellow "Wei" in a distinctively northern growl and then lots of other monosyllabic groans until I'd realized he must have concluded his conversation since he'd resumed his reclining position along the window and reclosed his eyes (he'd already pulled the blinds away from the passenger in the forward seat in order to block off the sunlight and glared threateningly at him when the poor guy foolishly attempted to pull the blinds back into their original position....my seatmate had done the same with the curtains from behind us as well....nobody was willing to risk tugging at their curtains when they realized who this guy was). Not that I knew he was a thug when I'd first relocated from a seat I'd taken on the bus to my "assigned" seat (Karen, Alex and I had never guessed that the express bus had assigned seats) and found him occupying my aisle seat 15. I had pointed at my chest and then where he was sitting. No response. So I did it a bit more forcefully, with a Clint Eastwood raised eyebrow and without a single word (which I figured later worked greatly to my advantage, since I probably would have again said "The food is good.") He'd moved to the window and we did not exchange niceties.

As we finally approached the Guilin bus terminal, we got stuck in traffic. It seems all the buses in Guilin converge to one location a few blocks off the main street, and if you'd seen how many buses were crammed into the station, you'd understand why all the buses, cars, bicycles, and carts were backed up several blocks and not moving. Since Jackie was still punching the bad guys and I'd started to figure out the plot, we were okay with the hold up, but my seatmate was not. His restlessness (and I presume familiarity with the neighborhood and possibly the stench of my bug repellent) caused him to be the only person to insist on being let off prematurely into the mayhem. I felt victorious, and sighed a deep breath as my backpack was placed on the only vacant seat on the express. Minutes later, we entered the bus stop, which unlike the airport (our ultimate planned destination), displayed no English signs anywhere and resembled instead a scene of pure pandemonium. After ten days in China, I'd concluded that nothing was ever what I expected, and I was not let down. Wandering around the bus station felt a lot like being lost in a football stadium during game day. We searched for what looked like it might be a ticket office in order to buy tickets for the airport bus. Three intelligent people wandering helplessly in Southeast Asia watching each other's backpacks in a sea of singsong faces of people who were probably quite nice but could be killers. They doubtless all knew how to effortlessly wring a chicken's neck, and that itself kept us on our toes. We got into a conversation with a driver of a black cab, which we knew would involve negotiating an agreed upon fare to the airport (we didn't want another "fir teen" miscommunication over price), and reached a middle ground which was just slightly more than what we knew we'd paid to take the combination shuttle and cab from the airport six days earlier. We followed him to his cab (parked near the real ticket counter), and he whisked us off to the airport. He asked if we were hungry, and offered to take us to a restaurant so that we could grab some lunch before our flight. Alex thanked him, but explained that we were stuffed still from breakfast. We felt like old pros, driving through Guilin and recognizing areas near our seedy hotel where we'd spent two nights earlier on our trip. In fact, he was parking on the wrong side of the street so that we could eat lunch at the Lonely Planet restaurant. He'd misunderstood our request (or maybe it was a cousin’s restaurant). After explaining again that we weren't hungry, and blocking traffic in both directions as he turned his taxi around right there in the middle of the street, we were once again off to the Guilin airport. We drove through such interesting parts of the city, and then through parts of the edge of the city which looked like new industrial areas, fairly contemporary yet empty campuses of business ventures which looked recently vacated. Then we saw some beautiful countryside, where I found myself playing the game of identify the pollutant as I watched ponds of various shades of brown mixed into the fields of deep green. Again, there were intermittent areas of residential and then again industrial areas, with many smokestacks still belching an interesting mix of blue and gray smoke. With the exception of one brick factory, I couldn't definitively describe any of the products being manufactured at these locations. But I did start making notes of the few locations which displayed any words in English, because I started to feel the hairs on my neck tingle. This was not the same road we'd traveled a week earlier when we'd been shuttled from the airport to the city, not even close. We were lost. Worse, Karen and Alex were beginning to suspect that we were being driven to an undisclosed location where thieves were waiting to rob and dismember us, and even what little remained of our bodies (nothing went to waste in China) would go undiscovered forever. Their suspicions were confirmed when we turned onto a stone road which had no other traffic except three wheeled carts, all of which were snaking around like we were attempting to avoid the hundreds of six foot diameter pot holes and puddles of unknown depth. I was just about to reach for my cellphone to call 411, not for information but rather, in China, is the number for emergency, so that I could tell the operator "The food is good" and that (on the off chance somebody on the other end spoke English) the most recent sign I'd seen which I could identify said Greater China Mining Company, but then I saw a large airplane at low altitude in the distance. As we rounded the next hill, the control tower came into view as did an entrance, of sorts, to a well manicured and fairly modern airport. We had apparently traveled to the other "main entrance" of the Guilin airport to avoid taking the toll roads, and hence had been treated to a much more interesting and varied terrain, not to mention adrenaline rush which often accompanies watching too many horror films and then imagining living them in real life. Even though I had been confident all along, the tone of the girls' voices had caused a few pangs of concern, in spite of the several nice conversations Alex had with our driver, who again seemed too nice to be the brutal killer that he could have just as well been. He could have retrieved the business card he'd given us after he'd robbed and killed us is what Karen said. We were relieved to have been dropped at the international wing, even though we were just flying domestically back to Beijing.

The girls ran off the hit the restroom, made even more necessary by the bumpiest segment of the journey between the pot holes, as I determined that we were actually fairly close to where we needed to be to check in for our flight. Actually, we weren't far from the very helpful tourist information desk which I'd initially found when I uncharacteristically ventured off from Alex after we first landed in Guilin, although it was currently unstaffed. We checked Alex's backpack since it was loaded with our liquids, and then proceeded through airport security. We were met by a couple of perplexed guards who, after seeing the bag of tennis racket shaped electric bug zappers (as I've described, some unusual gift items we'd hoped to carry on), insisted that we return to the ticketing agent to check the items as luggage. After seeing the look on our faces as we tried to determine how we'd be able to figure out how to reaccomplish what we'd achieved thus far, they simply said that we could carry the items on board with us, which we did, so I told them "The food is good." (Now that I think about it, security should never have allowed us to carry eight of these charged things on board.) We found some very comfortable '70's style chairs in a lounge area and paid as much for each small beer as we'd paid for a meal at some of the family run eating establishments on our trip, and although it bothered Alex to spend so much money, Karen and I had looked at spending yuan more as a challenge in determining the most effective combination of bills to provide so as to minimize the number of fairly worthless wu jou (or half kuai) notes we might receive in change. We liked the more valuable, larger notes, because they were physically bigger. On the flip side, larger notes were easier to grab when one reached into one's shirt pocket, which made me rather inept at easily pulling out pocket change (wu jous) for street beggars, so I just gave up trying and instead resolved to be called a series of mean names as I walked past, or maybe they were also commenting on the quality of the food.

We played poker until boarding time, Karen again getting a number of really good hands, and then, like before, got onto the plane bound for Beijing with a relatively few number of other westerners, who were all seated together in the center section of the otherwise empty plane. Just a few minutes before departure, the balance of vacant seats were taken by a wave of locals, who looked as if they were seasoned shoppers who had just kept shopping until the last possible moment and then jumped on the bus as it departed. This is actually an accurate description, because many of these people were busy taking pictures of each other and out the windows and gleefully giggling as the stewards tried to get them to put their shopping bags under the seats or above in compartments. Many would stand to take photos as the plane was taxiing in preparation for take off, and I think the stewards finally gave up and were satisfied if most of the passengers still had their seat belts fastened as the plane took off. I wish I'd known how to get these discount tickets, because this particular flight happened to be the most expensive leg of all of our Chinese travel arrangements. And it turned out to be the least appealing, as far as food options. Alex is convinced that fish was on the menu (we'd avoided anything raised from China's waterways) solely for the non-Chinese speaking passengers, and she wanted to get our stewards' names in order to write to China Air and complain after she thought she heard them utter the Chinese word for "pork" to some of the passengers sitting behind us. As it turned out, the lunch was edible and we all survived, in spite of the fact that it was Alex's first time in her life to eat fish on a plane, and Karen and I hadn't done so since we first saw the movie Airplane.

We were treated to an uncharacteristically clear sunset as we flew into Beijing Friday evening. We could see the canals which at one time had defined the fields and paddies to the southeast of the city, and now were flanked with trees. We saw one walled area which seemed to be a luxurious golf course and some official looking buildings, which Alex pointed out might be an area occupied by party officials. Nearer the city and closer to high rise apartment buildings was the requisite nuclear power plant. In the distance to the north and west were the mountains. We'd learn later that because it had rained recently and from the stiff winds, the air was fairly clean. We splurged again and grabbed a taxi to the hotel. Our final three nights would be spent using HHonors points at the Beijing Doubletree.

It turned out to be one of the nicer hotels of the trip, and we were in the mood for a little pampering. Alex stuck around for a little while, but started to get sleepy, so she grabbed a taxi back to the university. Karen and I found the lounge and had our first mixed drinks in nearly two weeks, which were accompanied by some snacks which looked like Pringles potato chips but tasted like something completely different. We were not very picky, for our drinks contained real ice. And our room had the first soft bed we'd found since arriving in China. We turned the silent yet efficient air conditioning down to a frigid 22 degrees and passed out fifteen stories above the city.

Back to Beijing and the Simatai section of the Great Wall

5/21 - There are cities other than Beijing in China (but Beijing is a lot of fun)

Thursday morning here now, and we're due for a day of "rest" around here until we check out at noon, take our bags up to Tsinghua, take just the clothes we'll need for the next 8 days and stuff them in our backpacks, and meet up with Stevo for dinner on the way to the train station for an overnight trek to Xi'an. The next post will come (hopefully) from somewhere on the Silk Road, though the road would be better described as dusty or well worn and very dirty. I’m amazed at the number of people who spend most of their days sweeping dirt from the Beijing sidewalks using hand made straw brooms.

Thought about my youngest daughter's acting recital and wondering how it went back in the US. Was also thinking of several of her operas while wandering the Summer Palace . There was the main opera house, as I’ve mentioned, a grand outdoor stage where, historically, visiting foreign dignitaries (now us) were able to enjoy some local show tunes. We were entertained by two singers, dressed in yellow gold silk and moving in unison while singing some beautiful chant. We toured a bit more, then on our way past the stage again, there appeared to be a half dozen musicians playing bamboo and strumming chickens (or preparing them for dinner). It was magnificent. No, honestly, I don't know what they were strumming, which pretty much sums up how well I can identify what we've been eating. I think we just use the word "chicken" in the same way we used to tell the girls while growing up that chicken was the main ingredient of clam chowder in order to get them to eat it.

We're off to find some "chicken" for breakfast. Instead of eating out faithful burrito (which we should have done), we climbed our first Bell Tower (the adjacent Drum Tower was closed for renovations) to escape a rickshaw driver. He’d waited for us anyhow, since he’d successfully convinced me to say "maybe" we'd hire him when we went in, and although he was disappointed after we said we wanted to walk, he became distracted and left after a cyclist crashed into me. The lady apologized profusely, even though I’m certain it was my fault, and what little discomfort I felt was nothing compared to the pleasure of avoiding the incessant hounding of the street vendors. We walked the other direction around Houhai ("Ho" "Hi") Lake in central Beijing. We walked past a six hundred-year-old bridge, which still supports traffic (which is good, since I realized our taxi had driven over it the night before). Houhai has become a popular spot for tourists and young expatriates. The lake is surrounded by old people and children, though we had our share of vendors to deal with in the more touristy parts of the park. It seemed many of the older residents wandering the streets wore name or address tags. Could these be simply aids for a concerned neighbor to help point the elderly in the right direction? After all, I’d seen many instances of people assisting older folks by holding their arms while walking along the sidewalks. I’d like to think that this was the purpose of the necklaces, so that I could imagine a very sensitive and caring society.

We couldn’t help but laugh when we saw several men wearing Speedo swimsuits as they prepared for their morning swim in Houhai after using the exercise equipment at the lake’s edge. But these were brave souls, swimming in any body of water in China we had concluded was off limits for our family, and the water temperature had to have been fairly brisk. One unusually tall fellow smiled broadly and said proudly, in English, "Welcome!" It was too charming, and both Karen and I did what we could to communicate our friendliness back.

We checked out of our hotel before noon. Karen and I felt like we'd already accomplished quite a bit, a couple of round eyes carrying their backpacks, rolling their bags, and flagging down a taxi to get up to Tsinghua. Too bad the front desk had written "North Gate" rather than "Northeast Gate" (a rather major difference at a large university). Ultimately, I had to get Alex on the cell phone (smart move of Steven’s to provide us with a temporary cell phone) to explain to our driver where we needed to go.

Alex needed some alone time. She was recovering from concert, which was some American band. The venue had been so crowded and so hot that Alex and Steven had both become dehydrated. While she relaxed and visited with a friend on Skype, Karen and I ventured out alone. Since we’d been unsuccessful at finding breakfast, we were more than a bit hungry. We were able to find the cafeteria at which we’d eaten on Tuesday, and Alex had given us her meal card. But you would be surprised how difficult it is to order food when all one sees is Chinese symbols. Although we’d made it in time to catch lunch, and there were still a dozen windows open, we had to simply stand there like idiots and watch the various dishes being set on the stainless steel counters until some person who had ordered came along to collect them. I ran after a student, hoping he might speak a bit of English, to ask him what he called the bowl of noodles, broth, veggies, and hard boiled egg he had carried off. He was very friendly, and tried two times to help me pronounce the name of the dish, unsuccessfully I’ll admit. He then offered to buy me the dish using his meal card. Maybe he thought I was a visiting professor, but I think he was just being compassionate. I think I thanked him, but every time I said "she she" it probably sounded more like "shay shay" (and I couldn’t help but think of Arnold Schwarzenegger and his thick accent). Karen and I settled on simply grabbing a few of the dishes as they were set out, hoping not to offend anyone, but letting our stomachs dictate our needs. We swiped Alex's meal card and assume we paid for someone's food.



Back to Alex’s place for a brief nap. We ran out of time and couldn't meet Steven for dinner as planned, so we grabbed a taxi to take us to a favorite restaurant of Alex's. Traffic had come to a complete stop, so our driver decided to climb the curb and drive on the sidewalk for the two hundred yards to the next intersection. I don't think the photos I took sitting in the front passenger seat really captured the experience as much as I'd hoped, but you'll just have to understand (as I was beginning to) that it was just another afternoon on the streets (sidewalks) of Beijing. We went to some sushi place near the university. We didn’t ask where the fish came from, but it was tender and buttery, quite exceptional really, and like every other place we’d eaten, cheap. The waitresses were petite, at attention, smiling, dressed alike in red and gold, and ready to serve. Afterward, we took a taxi to one of several of Beijing’s train stations, stopping just short so that the girls could run in the upscale three-story contemporary shopping mall to find a rest room.By the reaction of most of the people at the train station, very few Americans ride the night train. We kept a close eye on all of our belongings while Alex bought us all some Propel-like drinks and enough water to last through the night. We boarded our train and found Alex's top bunk. Karen and I were in a different car, and we also had top bunks. We were luckier than Alex, who would be sleeping in the same car as a screaming child. She spent the first hour or two of the trip up in my bunk. We played lots of poker until we could no longer keep our eyes open. I slept with my money pouch suspended around my neck.


Another cultural experience, sharing a room with a Chinese couple. We were completely unable to communicate with our lower bunkmates, though while the wife was off to use the facilities, the husband decided to make every bodily noise possible, as loudly as possible. Karen and I found it oddly amusing, for he didn’t make any effort to excuse himself or say anything, as one might expect according to Western decorum. I was beginning to think that in China I could get away with just about anything, and it made me feel incredibly young.That didn’t last long. Although I slept well, by body was very sore. Using the moving train’s very small bathroom to brush my teeth with bottled water was an adventure in itself. The tracks around Beijing made for a very smooth ride, and we hardly noticed when we’d started out. That was not the case as we approached Xi’an, and the sounds and movement of the train were noticeably apparent.

Continue with us to Xian...

Author's note: Many more photos from the fifteen day trip around China can be found at http://www.davegribbin.com/Photography/China

5/20 - Second day in Beijing (you will be sore, and you will get a great massage)

We've had such a great time and are already very sore to prove it.

We ventured out on our own this morning to treat ourselves to a great breakfast burrito (for lack of a better Chinese term), two of them for 3 yuan (about fifty cents).

Caught a taxi (39 yuan, about six dollars) up to the Summer Palace and spent an amazing day exploring each of the many royal buildings which border a beautiful lake (I assume it was once very beautiful).

A couple of traditional opera singers danced elegantly while a musician played some stringed instrument (a few days later, and I could name all of the traditional stringed instruments of China).

Alex came out and met us at the exit gate after her classes ended. We ate a fine lunch of tall beers, leeks, beef, and spicy chicken and watched as Alex overwhelmed the proprietors with her Chinese language skills (it's readily apparent that few young blonde Americans speak Chinese), all while her taxi driver patiently waited to take us 50km farther north to the Ming Tombs.

We spent the afternoon deep in the 600 year-old main tomb and later along a substantial stone wall (20 feet wide and 50 feet high and probably a half mile in circumference) which, wonderfully, the three of us explored by ourselves. From the wall we could see many of the twelve distant, grand emperor tombs of the Ming Dynasty. Our driver waited patiently to deliver us back to our hotel where we tried to clean up a bit before meeting up with Steven at his favorite restaurant run by some Mongol friends.

We ate a large dinner of beer, roasted garlic on skewers, skewered lamb, fried potato slices, kung pao cabbage (Stevo knows the recipe), spicy green pepper chicken, beef with unidentifiable veggies, chicken in a red sauce, and fried bread to help soak up all the various wonderful flavors. We enjoyed this feast on a '50's formica table on the sidewalk outside the Mongolian restaurant, which was far too crowded inside. We were entertained by our 10-year-old waiter and a group of young people involved in a lover's dispute (a dramatic spat where two suitors shouted and pushed one another, with girlfriends pretending to hold them back, assisted by the boys friends and others). Mind you, this was just a few feet away from our table in the alley. I considered it another fine cultural education. I found the young lady jumping up and down on a padded, overstuffed living room chair across the alley to be even more intriguing. She jumped uninterrupted for well over an hour, apparently practicing for the rhythmic gymnastics sport of baton twirling. We weren't sure of her age, somewhere between seven and thirty (like my estimate of just about every person I saw in Beijing), but she bounced in her long cotton summer dress, oblivious to the commotion and crowd all around her. After it got pretty dark and the love spat performers had cleared, the toddlers and little ones were encouraged to play in the alley. Grandma let one little 3-year-old have it, whacking him on the head a dozen times with a rolled up newspaper, after he'd almost been run down by a bicycle. Surprising thing is that I felt it was totally appropriate. The kids had better learn young that pedestrians need to avoid bicycles, which need to avoid scooters, which need to avoid cars, which need to avoid buses because there is no formal hierarchy. There are no rules. If there is an open space, however brief, it will become filled with some mode of transportation, if only for an instant. I'd describe all of the near misses we witnessed, but it is not possible to remember them all, even for a single cab trip. Let me summarize by just saying it is a constant hum of chaos, yet it seems to work very efficiently. We only saw one traffic mishap returning from the Tombs, and it only involved four crunched cars and some drivers yelling at one another.

After dinner, we grabbed another cab to return to near our hotel. Steven found a nearby public neighborhood toilet so that he and Karen could make one of their three visits (they both blamed the Holt bladders and Chinese beers). A wise move, because all four of us spent the next hour getting full body massages from very nice blind masseurs, spending a whopping fifty yuan. Steven made sure I was provided with Master Li, who had the strongest hands of any human I've ever encountered or imagined. He found every sore, tight muscle I'd ever had, and worked every joint until it popped or clicked into place. He even spoke a small amount of English, but I was in such a state of total relaxation that I couldn't form two words myself. But it wasn't necessary. Steven was on the table next to me, and he was speaking up a storm with Master Li, laughing at every grunt coming from me. Toss in Alex a few tables to my right, and the two of them kept the masseurs in stitches with their mastery of the language. Or at least I thought it was funny. I have no idea what they said.

You'd think the day had been full enough. Turns out this massage parlor is just a few hundred yards from our own Bamboo Garden, where an hour at the hotel spa ran ten times as much, and Karen and I did indeed call it a day. We'd already called upon our fourth winds to enable us to walk any more steps after the $7 hour-long massage. Alex and Steven, however, were headed off to a rock concert at a local venue (never mind that it's 9:45 pm). We were asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

Continue to travel beyond Beijing...

Author's note: Many more photos from the fifteen day trip around China can be found at http://www.davegribbin.com/Photography/China

5/19 - First full day in Beijing (you will survive)

Alex spent last (Monday) night at the Bamboo Garden Hotel with us. She had insisted on meeting our flight. She was much too tired after taking a train and shuttle, then arriving at the airport only ten minutes before we did (in spite of the fact that we were over an hour late because of health questionnaires and flu screening). She was very relieved to find the nice driver sent by the hotel holding up a "Gribbin" sign, who told her that we hadn’t yet emerged from customs. (The hotel wisely sends a driver who is able to locate its tall wooden entry gate from the alley, since it is a boutique hotel buried in the middle of a Beijing hutong, quite removed the the main street.) Since the airport’s moving sidewalks and air conditioning had been turned off several hours earlier to conserve electricity, most of the passengers were showing the effects of heat, humidity, and very long international flights.

Tuesday morning, Alex showed us how it's done for breakfast, Beijing style. We sampled a variety of breakfast items from three different street vendors. I guess they should be called garage door vendors, since they operate from the bottom floor of a very prevalent four-story building type we saw throughout China. We enjoyed greasy but very good fried dough balls in brown craft paper. Best were the really hot and delicious breakfast "burritos" (crepes made on a well used round hot plate and filled with spicy sauce, scrambled eggs, veggies, and crunchy things) in some tissue thin plastic. The plastic was so thin, and burrito so hot, that I still can't believe the plastic didn't melt. Breakfast vendors seem to work from about 5:30 to 9:30 every morning (after which I presume they become lunch vendors). Alex showed us the art of navigating the Beijing subway and we rode it up to Tsinghua

University. We hired a cab for the final mile or two because the university is huge. We hoped that she might actually attend at least some of her Tuesday classes. We saw Alex's dorm room, after showing the front desk our passports. The university spoils its foreign students, considering it was a large single. Normally dorm rooms that size housed four to six Chinese students. We met loads of Alex's buddies from many parts of the world, whom she likes to pair up with to explore other parts of China or just hang with at the university to play soccer. We grabbed a satisfying lunch at the cafeteria, and bought Dave's Tsinghua hat. Borrowed two more bicycles so that the three of us could pedal around the university, which we did for a couple of hours. Took a cab so that we could meet up with Cousin Steven at a Barnes & Noble like bookstore, where he was giving a Nature Conservancy presentation. I was very tempted by the low priced, beautiful art and photography books, but since few contained any English text, I showed great restraint. Went to his two room apartment in the heart of Beijing, which he rents for about $200 a month, communal toilet and all (though he does have a shower in his kitchen). Met his rather homely cat, its bizarre and uneven fur implying that it had one too many encounters with live power lines.

Grabbed a wonderful meal nearby and got to watch some Chinese businessmen drink too much baijo, the kerosene flavored rice wine priced at about two yuan per bottle. We watched as one of the fellows exceeded his limits, and we knew that it would just be a matter of time before he lost his dinner (which he promptly did into one of the larger dining room planters). Since this was our first cultural exchange, I really didn’t know what to think about his behavior. After all, George Bush the senior threw up on the Japanese prime minister at a state dinner decades ago, and I’d already seen loads of people spitting up all sorts of vile substances while walking on the Beijing sidewalks. More to the point, few restaurants have bathroom facilities anyway, and this fellow was hardly able to walk to the nearest communal bathroom, several buildings away. Took a taxi to our hotel, and Alex continued on in the same car to the university.

Continue to second day in Beijing...

Author's note: Many more photos from the fifteen day trip around China can be found athttp://www.davegribbin.com/Photography/China

5/18 - Beijing for the naive traveller (expect the unexpected)

• Arrive Beijing. We are on the ground and in line to be deemed healthy enough to enter China. Haven't seen Alex yet but should be soon!
• Dave and I have landed, been deemed healthy enough to enter China (only took about an hour or so of standing in line) and have successfully found Alex and our hotel. Absolutely delightful little place--looking forward to exploring tomorrow. Plan to explore Alex's school and Olympics area the meet up with Steven.
• What an adventure!
  

Karen's e-mails from her Blackberry (above) are short and concise. I would have been wise to have learned from her example. My comments (from this point on, equivalent to about 52 pages in MS Word, also called a short novel by some) are a little longer. I'd have written even more. Fortunately, I didn't have regular access to a computer for the first several days. By the time I found a computer, I was already overwhelmed by the visual and other stimuli of this first visit to China. So, bear with me as I try to describe an exotic experience from my naive point of view. The balance of the trip becomes even more flavorful, and I think, makes for better reading. And like everything I’ve ever written, it’s all true.

Continue to first full day in Beijing...

Author's note: Many more photos from the fifteen day trip around China can be found at http://photos.davegribbin.com/Photography/China