Emily Clobbers Killer Dog

In Songpan, it was a beautiful day--bright sunny, clear crisp mountain air. With a gorgeous day we
decided to go for a hike. The people in Songpan are mostly Tibetan and look very kind and happy here.
We started off down this road that followed a river. There were lots of animals grazing on the hills. On
the steep slopes we could see people out with goats, sheep, and horses. The hills that are terraced from grazing are terraced to be planted with vegetables. In the far distance were jagged snow capped peaks. Emily and I hiked a while and then decided to bust up this large hill for the ridge line. After an hour of zigzagging back and forth, we had reached the top.
We ate lunch next to someones house and enjoyed the beautiful view. Then we turned around and our plan was to hit
the west gate, the gate that soldiers had used a very long time ago to guard the city. We found a dirt
road and started to work our way back. Emily is this terrific navigator and that seems to be her role in this little adventure. I think my role may be watching the traffic. When we were in Yangshuo I saved her with my motherly clutch from possibly getting clobbered by a minivan so today she returned the favor. We passed a house with a scrappy looking midsized dog of indistinguishable pedigree. He snarled rather viciously and Emily wisely grabbed some rocks before heading past him. I, of course, lolly gagged past the dog with my back to it, thinking I would coo it a lullaby. While I was lolly gagging it lunged for me and Emily threw rocks. It worked and that is how Emily saved my life! OK well she at the very least saved me from a rabid dog or rabies shots in China. By the way, none of the dogs in China are very handsome.

No Scam in Songpan

We left Chengdu for Songpan on a much anticipated bus ride by me. The bus ride had been much fretted over by me as the guide books talk about narrow impassible roads, purchasing special insurance for the bus ride and buying tickets for back seats in case of a crash. So even though we had a speedy drive that was an excessive honker (even by Chinese standards), the ride still did not live up to the white knuckle gripping hair raising experience I had envisioned. Luckily I couldn't see most of the driving (the gal from England in who could told me it was bad) as I was in the back seat but we only had one close call by my tight standards. We arrived in Songpan which is set in the mountains around 2200 meters. It reminded me a little of gardiner but I suspect they get more rain. The hills were completely bare and overgrazed but we were told at one time they were completely forested. Our arrival in Songpan was the best yet. We were greeted by helpful people who did not push anything on us AND we ended up with the best hotel yet for only 15Y each. Our hotel had 4 blankets for each of us AND a heated blanket. Although there was no hot water, we were quite happy with the heated blanket and cheap rate. The BEST part of the hotel room is that for the first time we actually paid less than our friends who spoke Chinese! It was so nice not to get scammed.

Sichuan Opera

While still in Chengdu, Emily and I were at a tea house when approached by Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee told us that he gave tours of the Sichuan opera and since he was not high pressure and spoke very good english we agreed that this would be fun. By the way, the tea houses are not as refined and manicured as Emily and I expected. Basically there is sunflower seeds, garbage, etc all over the tables and floors. However the tea is good and people play cards so we usually manage to blend in here more than anywhere else.

The Sichuan opera apparently is a dying art, as it is not supported by the government, the dialect is only understood by people of the Chengdu area, and most Chinese of a younger generation are not interested in the opera. The Sichaun opera has been around 300 years. We arrived early and were able to watch the performers apply their makeup. He explained that is was only recently, the woman were allowed to wear makeup for the performance. I was well entertained by the whole thing, as Mr. Lee shared with us while watching the the opera stars apply make up that he would be happy to have a wife wake him up singing opera. I decided he had a crush on the very beautiful 20 year old opera star. She had been performing Opera since she was 10. All of the performers had parents or grandparents that performed opera. We had front row seats and were given tea that was refilled constantly. The stage and costumes by our standards were much less than what you would see at a poor high school play. In Sichuan opera tradition dictates that they only perform part of the story so total we saw 4 short stories performed. The orchestra seemed to be comprised of lots of cymbals. After a performance from our young star as a maid (although she certainly did not look very maid like), Mr. Lee personally handed her flowers. The tradition is to buy silk flowers and they are put on stage during the performance for the performer and then after the act, the silk flowers are all collected and the ladies sell them again to people wishing to put them on stage for the next performer. Now it was intermission and I guess since his star had performed he was ready to go. He asked us twice if we wanted to stay for the entire thing but of course we did! By the end of the show though my ears were ringing and every high note the performers hit was like chalk on the chalk board to my ears. I thought it was funny how one culture could find something so beautiful to listen to and for another it was abrasive to the core. Emily also concurred that her ears hurt too. Mr. Lee gave us a very nice translation and the stories were fun to hear. Since the costumes, silk flowers and stage were minimal, we really had to use our imagination and that was fun since for the most part in the U.S. things tend lean towards being more of an assault on the senses.

Free Lodging on the Train

Hoping to be fully recovered from our unexpected Chinese Diet and still questioning whether our stomach was cramping from food poisoning or hunger, we got on a bus for a four hour ride to Liozhou where we would board a train for Chengdu. Thanks to a very kind english speaking chinese man we found the right train. Just when I think all my trust has been totally taken away by Chinese scammers on the street, it is totally restored by a kind gesture from another. We had ourselves to hard sleepers. In our little spot there were 6 beds (3 high each) and about 100 people in our car, 1,000 on the entire train. We got on our train and discovered met our other berth mates. One of who put our overloaded bags up, while we tried to squeeze into our berth. His 6 year old son gleefully asked us "how we were in?" in English. Our berths were in the middle and very comfortable. They were actually long enough for me. We seem to always have our mandarine phrasebook in tow and decide to give it a whirl. We have no idea what time we get in or where we are so we point to some phrases asking one of our neighbors what time we arrive. He writes it down for us and we are alarmed to discover that we cannot read his characters. He has written 2 characters and a 6 so we have no idea if it is 6AM or 6PM. We find out shortly. After 15 hours on the train, we discover that the train ride is actually 33 hours not 19 hours. We are getting quite a bit more than we bargained for. However, we try to remain up beat and tell ourselves it's another night of free lodging. Luckily there is no shortage of vendors as they go up and down the aisles selling everything from socks to noodles. We were given quite an elaborate sales pitch on the socks. I think though that we might have bed soars by the time we get off this train. Meanwhile the wild child is entertaining the entire train by running up and down the aisle and climbing up and down the ladders. I guess some thing are universal. Emily and I sit by the window, the two premium seats, that are not on a berth, and he poses for pictures with us, while his dad takes them on his camera (everyone is connected here).

Everything is a business in China

Emily and I made friends with a guy from the Czech republic on our overnight sleeper to Yangshuo. The three of us decided to rent bikes and ride around the rural areas near the city. The agricultural fields are basically cheek and jaw with the city. Emily and I got ourselves a couple of one speed cruisers that had bells! We took off down the backroads. Unfortunatley many tourists do this and even though we were in the rural areas, there were still plenty of vendors trying to sell their wares. The first was an old woman who ran down the road to try to sell us a crown of flowers. I decided that it was a botanist weakness and it was too much to see the woman running after us and bought a wreath. Unfortunately I was only able to get the flowers to the family. Emily demanded that I wear it which unfortunately labeled me as a sucker. We eventually took a bamboo raft that was about a meter why and 3 meters long across the river (they loaded our bikes on too). We attempted to get a raft trip down the river but our chinese was not good enough and they wanted an outrageous price so we went on to the next village. Here were were greated by lots of old woman selling flower crowns and even though emily and I said no, they kept putting them on our head. While our friend work out a deal down the river, we were circled by the old woman selling everything from oranges to flowers. Finally we got on the rafts. Once on the rafts though, there were smaller boats that chased us down the river trying to sell us water, beer, peanuts, etc. The largest rapid was a one meter drop. We could not figure out why our raft guide was whooping and hollaring and flapping around behind us when we went over it. It turns out that immediately below the drop, there was a itsy bitsy sand spit of an island. On the island they were set up taking pictures of us that we could purchase as a laminated copy. Our czech friend wanted one so they printed it off on a computer and printer that was apparently ran off of a battery. It was unbelievable that even on this tiny island they were trying to sell us stuff. Once off the river, we continued to Moon Hill, a special rock that tourist pay a lot to see. The entire way up the mountain we were chased by old woman selling us water. On the top of the mountain though, we found a chinese tourist who instructed us on how to properly pronounce in Chinese, "I do not want, thank you" AND that was the most helpful bit of knowledge we acquired since being here. It seems to work after about the 4 time.

Realizing how good you have it

We decided to move to a different hotel after being scammed by the two brothers. It was difficult to leave because they harassed us the entire way out. We finally found white kids street (actually called foreigner street). Emily was excited to potentially make friends and I was appalled by all the people harassing us to buy things and the loud noise coming from various stores. We found ourselves a cheap hostel and moved in. Yangshuo is subtropical but it had been raining all day and certainly did not feel subtropical. It rained and then downpoured and rained and then torrential downpours. Amongst one of the downpours I had a cup of jasmine tea. I put my hands around the warm cup and enjoyed the heat. It smelled like a bouquet and visually jasmine flowers floating in water-- a botanist treasure--oooh I was happy as I could see the flower structure. It was very refined in taste. I realize 4/5 senses being content is not bad. The tea is oooh la la. In a search for heat, we went to the cafe advertising heat. We sat down and they set a fire in front of us. It was marvelous!! The owner was very interesting. She told us her family farmed 2500 square meters and did not have a well. She told us her mother would tell us that each grain of rice took at least one tear drop to produce. She also told me that when people enter her restuarant and don't eat everything, she saves it becasue she can't throw it out. We puled all day over the miserable conditions. Our hostel was cold, smelly, toilet didn't flush and much noisier than the last hotel. After spending a miserable night listening to bad Karoeke we decided to go back to the people who had snookered us 9/10 times. And we were happy! The father was happy to see us back and gave us a terrific deal. We decided we needed to go to the bad hostel to realize how good our hotel was.

Boating down the River in Yangshuo

Once at our hotel though, our friendly welcoming committee (Two Brothers or so they said), insisted that we wanted to take a boat tour. They waited outside our door and told us that the Polish kids were also going and TODAY only could we get this very good deal, at a huge discount (we later were told happily from their competition that we had paid way too much). In our sleep deprived confused state we agreed to the boat trip after they said they would throw in breakfast and lunch (always a perk in my eyes and very very very cheap for them!). At 8:30 we were off for our free breakfast of noodles with the locals. From arrival at the bus station to departure for our boat tour, Emily and I had enjoyed only 15 minutes of peace without the brothers trying to sell us a bicycle or boat tour and this 15 minutes only came after agreeing to the boat trip. We slurped down noodles (me closing my eyes so that no more hot sauce splashed me) on itty bitty chairs sized for preschoolers while the locals laughed at us. We laughed too, it was funny. The one brother (clearly the ladies man and aptly so as he was cute with a dimple and quite the charmer) who had told us he would be our tour guide the entire day, put us on a bus to a destination unknown to us. We were already staying at a hotel that we did not know the name of (no Pinyon name, just Chinese characters). As we headed out of town to our unknown destination without our guide, there was a sinking realization that we had forgotten our Chinese phrase book. Everyone else on the bus appeared to be locals commuting to work so we thought for sure we had been taken and we were just going to end up at a random destination, but later we discovered they were other Chinese tourists. At our unknown destination we were passed off to yet another tour guide speaking less English than the last and put on a ricochet with 6 others and shuttled to the river. At the river we were put on a boat. As we accelerated past tour boats, it became obvious that our guide was more interested in finishing the boat tour that had just begun than going at a leisurely pace. Occassionally he would pull away from his cigarette to bark out a fact about the passing scenery (I assumed because the other tourists would look at the hills, but he said everything in Chinese). We stopped at a gypsy camp, being greeted by vendors particulary interested in Emily and I (we were the only whites). Although the vendors greeted us with "Hello" and the "Hellos" became more insistant when we said, "No", the vendors did not seem to understand what "No" meant. Eventually to my delight, we reboarded, turned around and again accelerated past the tour boats. Departing the boat, we were passed off to another tour guide. Our lady told us to "go with this man" and he instructed to hop on a moped. While Emily beamed and was obviously having the time of her life, I clutched her and fretted over spinal injuries. At the lunch spot, we were pleasantly surprised by a nice fire and delicious food. The fires they make are coals in a steel pan that can then be moved to your seating loactions. They give off lots of heat and the entire time we were in China I fantasized about buying myself one of these heating contraptions. While we waited for our food we sat around the fire with local woman who were knitting. It was nice to be away from the vendors and safe in the security of the resturant. Although later we were moved to a table and the vendors started coming to our table selling things while we ate. Dinner was good and Emily and I were pleasantly surprised by this point to have gotten a tour, food, and not be abandoned trying to find our way back to Yangshou without our Mandarine Chinese phrase book. Before passing us off to her husband, our guide had instructed us to take a walk around town, come back to the restuarant and she would then put us on the bus to Yangshuo. Although this woman was no where insight, we decided to do as she suggested and walked around being chased by vendors. We found the pubic bathrooms, smelled them first before we saw them and true to the guide books, they were not that foxy. We returned to the restuarant wondering if the woman would remember to come get us. Back on the tour bus, the driving was frightening. Diesel trucks, old men pushing carts with their wares, motorcycles, bicyclists, tour buses, and goats all were on the same road and yet despite the lack of order, there were no accidents. I thought I would usually see at least one accident over the same distance in the US on my drive from Gardiner to Bozeman.

Shenzen to Yangshuo in the Horizontal Position

The adventure started after we got our visas and needed to cross the HK border into China. We got some noodles at a resturant where by limited chopstick skills splashed hot sauce into my eye and I thought I might be seeing the rest of china with only 1/2 my sight. Running late for our non-refundable sleeper to Yangshuo,after a bit of confusion and a few nice tips from the locals we arrived at the end of the subway line where we needed to walk ourselves into China. The description of Shenzhen "you can give knives & broken bottles amiss, forgo the books and the erudition and head straight for Shenzhen" --so we were a bit nervous. Crossing thru we did some whooping declaring we were "in" (China) or "out" (Hong Kong). In/out we didn't know for the better or worse. Entering Shenzhen, immediately we knew we were not in HK, and we were greeted by a tout or tourist parasite. We were really late for me being always perpetually early and even late for Emily who is perpetually tardy, we welcomed the offer from him to deliver us to the bus stop for only 10Y (1.50US). He walked us around a corner and we were there and it looked a heck of lot better than the Fargo bus stop. We thought we were going to be the only white kids on the bus, but at the last moment 3 polish guys showed up. I'm not sure what I expected but the sleepers basically would adequately accomadate a tall dwarf and even though you couldn't really move, I got a better night sleep than at the hostel the night before. We tried to bord a couple other buses, but the nice people kindly motioned us off the bus until those departed and our bus was ready. Clearly we were clueless. Bording the bus, we took off our shoes, put them in plastic bags, and I was pleasantly surprized to find out that our feet went under our neighbors head, so now they were comfortable for someone 5'5". Emily shimmied to the top bunk. There were 3 rows of sleepers with very narrow aisles that even the asians seemed to have difficulty squeezing down and in the back there was a tiny door that looked suspiciously like a bathroom (I never found out). Once the bus started up, TVs on upper and lower bunks came on and that is how I went to Yangshuo in the horizontal position. Early morning I woke to see beautiful karst pinnacles out our window, exiting the bus we were greeted by the unofficial Yangshou Tourism Committee. He ushered us off to his hotel and after and ardurous climb up 6 flights of stairs (100 steps!!) at 6:30AM we had ourselves room. However no sleep for us!

Hong Kong

3rd day in China and yet is has been very eventful. I have only a few sentences to describe Hong Kong. The hills are San Fran magnatitude and it has the world's longest escalator. The climate seems perfect to my liking --there is HUMIDITY and about 70F. Everyone saunters across the street while double decker buses come to a screeching halt. However, once the crosswalk turns red again, the buses certainly show no mercy, waiting for no one, grinding up hills making even the birds fly. Double decker buses take the 90 degree corners at speeds that I'm shamed at how fast I usually drive my curve huggin honda civic. Hong Kong was a good experience, other than paying $740 HK or a little over $100 US for our visas. We were set to embark on our next adventure--leaving the safety net of Hong Kong for China.

Chinese Robot invades Minneapolis

I first decided to head to China when my parents told me I am of Chinese decent. It's a long story as to how I didn't learn this earlier in life, but that's not the strangest part. The strangest part is, my sweet parents, then, purchased me Heather, a Chinese Robot, to keep me company while I was growing up. Yes, my sister, Heather, is a robot. (Explains a lot right?) She has recently moved to Minneapolis. Watch out Minnesota! Five years later Hansel was born, and he is actually of Swedish-Polish decent--he was not Chinese, nor was he a Chinese robot.

This is a little about us, but my strange family history is not why I started this blog. It's because, over the next five weeks I will be traveling around China, familarizing myself with my heritage and I would like to share some stories from my travels with all of you. To stay posted visit "Chop Suey" my new blog, often : )

Love, Heidi