we left beijing
and those pictures of mao
and took a long train ride
down to pingyao
it's an ancient, old town
in a province called shanxii
and it was really really cool
for us weary travelers three
there's three in our party
down from beijing's four
because annette split for shanghai
and is with us no more
i told you of the train ride
and the fun that ensued
but it was worth it to get to pingyao
where there's cool stuff and good food
a fourteenth century city
mainly built within a wall
and the japanese never destroyed it
they left it standing tall
temples and small alleys
shops and bikes and wares
it was a nice relaxing place
for my mom to lose her cares
for beijing had been stressful
mom's not the big-city kind
so kick-back relaxing pingyao
put her in a relaxed state of mind
and we liked it too,
amanda and me
we had a great time there,
us travelers three
three days we spent
and met many nice folks
and i impressed all the locals
with my impressions and jokes
so more on pingyao later
'cause this net place is busy
and people are waiting for this computer
and nothing rhymes with "busy"
oh well. i'm out. when i have more time, i'll post pictures of the fun we had in pingyao. it was great - lots of really nice people. now we're in xian, china for a few days. terracota warriors tomorrow. more later.
peace. out. word.
ben
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
regarding comments, by the way
i don't know if it's a communism thing or what, but the whole time we've been in china, neither amanda, annette, nor i have been able to look at our blogs or read the comments people are posting. we can get in to type, for some reason, but we can't view the finished products. i don't know why, and we've now tried in various internet places in various cities. so, in summary, i am currently unable to respond to or even read comments. if you are sending questions, please don't think me rude for not getting back to you...
keep it real,
ben
the long road to pingyao
with the hustle and bustle of beijing getting to us, and having seen most everything we wanted to see in the chinese capital, our traveling party split up sunday night and headed in opposite directions. actually, annette will be waiting in beijing another day before heading east by train to shanghai, from where she will wing it to chicago, and finally back home to minnesota. amanada, mom, and i, however, found ourselves in the beijing west train station on sunday night, tickets in hand for a trip of indeterminate length to pingyao, a cool old (ancient, actually) town with a 14th-century wall around the city center and lots of cool old buildings preserved within the wall.
we're here now, and we arrived just in time. another few minutes, and i think mom would have *definitely* have had enough of this trip. can't say i blame her, though: it was one of the more challenging train trips i've ever been on. consider this: we rode 12 hours packed into a train that made lots of local stops, and it was hot every time it stopped, and people were yelling in chinese lots of the way, and there were 128 people sitting just in our carriage, plus many more standing along the way. the train left an hour and a half late, so it didn't roll out of beijing until almost midnight, and arrived here at mid-morning. oh well - at least we only paid 43 yuan (about six bucks) for our tickets.
after such a journey, mom was understandably frazzled, but i think (hope) that this place will have a calming effect on her, because it's had one on me so far, and it is refreshingly different than beijing.
the trip was rough, no doubt, but mom and i were touched by random acts of kindness that we witnessed/benefited from. for instance, mom made her way into the carriage a few minutes ahead of me and amanada, who were lollygagging on the platform. a kind young man lifted mom's very heavy rolling duffel bag onto the racks above the seats for her, and when she was hot and trying to fan herself, he opened the window for her. he had a kind smile and i bet he was very nice. his girlfriend or wife or whoever slept with her head in his lap most of the way, and then, when we finally arrived in pingyao, the young man jumped up and pulled down her bag before i could even get a chance to do it.
we've seen many acts like this in china - people going out of their way to help me or mom or amanda or annette. but on the other hand, we've seen lots of not-so-chivalrous goings-on, like how if there was a husband and a wife on the crowded train, the man would sit while the woman stood most every time. that part, well, eh, not so good.
i slept as best i could on the train. the window next to me stayed open the whole way, which was all the better for the chinese guy across from me to surreptitiously sneak smokes when he thought the conductor wasn't looking. there were smoking areas at both ends of the carriage, but honestly, we were so packed into the train that it would have been hard for him to get there. using a look of facial disgust, however, i did persuade him to hold his lit cigarette outside of the window, instead of trying to hide it under the table between me and him, where i was in constant fear that he would inadvertently set my leg hair on fire.
i slept for five or ten minutes or a time, so it was a welcome relief when we arrived in pingyao and there was a lady there with a sign with my name on it (first and last, both spelled correctly, no less) to take us to the guesthouse. we loaded our luggage and ourselves onto a pair of motorcycle rickshaws (amanda and mom on one, me on the other) and set off across the cobblestone streets towards one of the five entrance gates spread around the old town walls. it was a fun ride, but vehicles weren't allowed past a certain point within the walls, so we had to wheel our luggage the final spurt.
but it was worth it, because the guest house is wonderful. like i said, all of the buildings in here are old, like 14th century. but our guesthouse has been retrofitted with modern restroom facilities (of the western variety - no squat toilet!) and a bed in my room that is (honestly) 6 feet by 10 feet. it is great. i've got to get one at home.
the rooms of the guesthouse (we got three singles - $14 apiece) and, well, pretty much the entire town, are covered in elaborate carvings and hand-painted scenes of ancient china, of concubines and emporers, peasants and oxcarts, temples and processions. the rooms are spread around a central courtyard which is filled with plants and has a big brass pot in the center of it in which swim lots of little goldfish.
we'll be staying here for a few days before heading out to xi'an and the terracotta warriors on wednesday or thursday. mom enjoyed our walk around the city in the afternoon (before a torrential thunderstorm rolled in, brightening the late afternoon sky with lightning). amanda and i are enjoying it, too. it's a good respite from beijing, and a great place to kick back and read a book before carrying on with the trip. they're even helping us book train tickets onward to xi'an.
and this time we'll get the expensive ones.
we're here now, and we arrived just in time. another few minutes, and i think mom would have *definitely* have had enough of this trip. can't say i blame her, though: it was one of the more challenging train trips i've ever been on. consider this: we rode 12 hours packed into a train that made lots of local stops, and it was hot every time it stopped, and people were yelling in chinese lots of the way, and there were 128 people sitting just in our carriage, plus many more standing along the way. the train left an hour and a half late, so it didn't roll out of beijing until almost midnight, and arrived here at mid-morning. oh well - at least we only paid 43 yuan (about six bucks) for our tickets.
after such a journey, mom was understandably frazzled, but i think (hope) that this place will have a calming effect on her, because it's had one on me so far, and it is refreshingly different than beijing.
the trip was rough, no doubt, but mom and i were touched by random acts of kindness that we witnessed/benefited from. for instance, mom made her way into the carriage a few minutes ahead of me and amanada, who were lollygagging on the platform. a kind young man lifted mom's very heavy rolling duffel bag onto the racks above the seats for her, and when she was hot and trying to fan herself, he opened the window for her. he had a kind smile and i bet he was very nice. his girlfriend or wife or whoever slept with her head in his lap most of the way, and then, when we finally arrived in pingyao, the young man jumped up and pulled down her bag before i could even get a chance to do it.
we've seen many acts like this in china - people going out of their way to help me or mom or amanda or annette. but on the other hand, we've seen lots of not-so-chivalrous goings-on, like how if there was a husband and a wife on the crowded train, the man would sit while the woman stood most every time. that part, well, eh, not so good.
i slept as best i could on the train. the window next to me stayed open the whole way, which was all the better for the chinese guy across from me to surreptitiously sneak smokes when he thought the conductor wasn't looking. there were smoking areas at both ends of the carriage, but honestly, we were so packed into the train that it would have been hard for him to get there. using a look of facial disgust, however, i did persuade him to hold his lit cigarette outside of the window, instead of trying to hide it under the table between me and him, where i was in constant fear that he would inadvertently set my leg hair on fire.
i slept for five or ten minutes or a time, so it was a welcome relief when we arrived in pingyao and there was a lady there with a sign with my name on it (first and last, both spelled correctly, no less) to take us to the guesthouse. we loaded our luggage and ourselves onto a pair of motorcycle rickshaws (amanda and mom on one, me on the other) and set off across the cobblestone streets towards one of the five entrance gates spread around the old town walls. it was a fun ride, but vehicles weren't allowed past a certain point within the walls, so we had to wheel our luggage the final spurt.
but it was worth it, because the guest house is wonderful. like i said, all of the buildings in here are old, like 14th century. but our guesthouse has been retrofitted with modern restroom facilities (of the western variety - no squat toilet!) and a bed in my room that is (honestly) 6 feet by 10 feet. it is great. i've got to get one at home.
the rooms of the guesthouse (we got three singles - $14 apiece) and, well, pretty much the entire town, are covered in elaborate carvings and hand-painted scenes of ancient china, of concubines and emporers, peasants and oxcarts, temples and processions. the rooms are spread around a central courtyard which is filled with plants and has a big brass pot in the center of it in which swim lots of little goldfish.
we'll be staying here for a few days before heading out to xi'an and the terracotta warriors on wednesday or thursday. mom enjoyed our walk around the city in the afternoon (before a torrential thunderstorm rolled in, brightening the late afternoon sky with lightning). amanda and i are enjoying it, too. it's a good respite from beijing, and a great place to kick back and read a book before carrying on with the trip. they're even helping us book train tickets onward to xi'an.
and this time we'll get the expensive ones.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
what a grand, spectacular wall they have here! great, even...
photos to accompany this blog entry can be found on the "chinese madness" entry from a day or two ago. enjoy the writing, then peruse the pix...ben
i was surprised when my mom told me, seven or eight months ago, that she would be interested in getting a passport and leaving america for a few weeks. it turns out, however, that among the places she's most wanted to see all her life have been china's great wall, the terracotta warrior in xian, and angkor wat near siem reap, cambodia.
we checked the great wall off that list yesterday; the other two shall be similarly completed within the next few weeks.
i'd like to add that i am uber-proud of my mom for being here. she arrived tuesday afternoon and we've had 4.5 days here already in beijing, and there've been some cultural hiccups (to be expected), but she's hanging in there and has already shown a good amount of gumption just in coming here at all. i mean, china is not the easiest place i've been to before. it's not like her first international trip was to france or somewhere like that: it's very, very different here, and it means a lot to me that she came here, and that she's doing better every day, and hopefully making great memories that will last a lifetime.
mushy stuff aside and back to the story. we opted for a package tour from our hotel yesterday morning, so a minibus driver picked us up just before eight in the morning. we set out to pick up a few more tourists: a young dutch couple and five australians. we fought our way through the brual beijing morning traffic, all the while hearing interesting tidbits about the city, both past and present, from tony, our heavily accented but very knowledgeable guide.
these tours are a bit of ruse, in that they offer air conditioned comfort and whatnot all for one affordable price, but you also have to stop at predetermined shopping stores, usually government-owned and sponsored, to shop for jade or silk or other knick-knacky stuff that i could care less about. oh well, the stops weren't for that long - and i'd brought a book - and mom ended up buying a cool jade christmas tree ornament that will always reminder her of the time she was, for some odd reason, in china.
we stopped for awhile at the emporers' tombs, where leaders of the past had been laid to rest for millenia, guarded by huge, elaborately detailed stone animals and guardians. it was already quite hot and humid at 10 a.m. and i was dripping sweat by the time i'd walked the 1.5 mile pathway, covered by weeping willows from which emited the sounds of thousands of unseen insects. i was happy when, at the conclusion of this section of the trip, the driver said we'd have time to rest before our next stop, as the drive would take an hour and a half.
we ate lunch after the second of the two predetermined stops at government stores and didn't make it to the great wall, about 120 KM northeast of beijing above a small town called matinyahu, until 1:30 p.m. matinyahu was further away, but the guidebooks and online all said that it was preferable to the more heavily touristed parts of the wall most close to beijing, near the city of badailing.
we parked at matinyahu and the guide told us to be back to the bus by 3:30, so after all that driving and forced shopping, we only ended up with two hours at the wall. but that was actually enough, considering how tired the climb made me.
i'd like to report that i jogged with ease up to the great wall of china, which ran along the peaks of the mountain in the matinyahu section, but the truth is much less impressive. in fact, it's downright pathetic, although i do take some pride in the fact that i made it at all.
not to the top, mind you, but to the ropeway station. in my defense, the station was like halfway up the mountain,and the pathway leading to it was paved with very uneven cobblestones, and it went up and up and up, and on and on and on, at like at a very steep angle. i had to pause a few times on the way up, and many people passed me by, and my 55-year-old mother was waiting for me at the top of hte mountain by the time i'd huffed and puffed my way up there, moving slowly, like a semi truck ascending a steep grade in low gears at a slow speed, but i made it.
i was pouring sweat by the time i reached the base of the aerial tramway station, and was quite nonplussed when i found that it had four flights of stairs to get to where you board the ropeway. i chatted it up with some guys from an egyptian tour group who had also had their asses kicked by the walk up to the station (bear in mind that the fitter among visitors were hiking half an hour up a zillion stairs to the top of the mountain).
my knees were killing me and my pulse was beating pretty good as i rode up five minutes in the cable car, over pine forests, towards the wall, which snaked away over distant peaks in both directions. then i got to the top and found -- guess what! -- more stairs! darn! i really need to hit the stairmaster when i get home, because i was dying as i leaned against the great wall and looked for my mom. i found her quickly, however, and she told me she was proud of me for making it because regardless of my fatness, it was a good haul up to the station.
the wall itself was spectacular, but you've seen it before, and i'm getting tired (nearly midnight here), so i'm gonna cut this entry off pretty soon. mom and i took some photos, admired the views, talked about how the wall had taken 900 years to build and stretched for thousands of miles, and then we took the ropeway back down.
coming down the mountain wasn't as bad as going up had been, although i had some pretty good jelly legs going by the time i made it (without tripping, much to my delight) down to the parking lot, as trucks that go slowly up grades must also use a lot of breaking power to keep the load under control on the way down.
all in all, a great day. anytime you can see something like the great wall, it's a good day, but more than actually seeing the wall, i liked the look of excitement i saw on my mom's face as we explored it. it made all the climbing, all the stairs, all the sweating and sore knees, more than worth it.
i'd do it all again in a heartbeat.
i was surprised when my mom told me, seven or eight months ago, that she would be interested in getting a passport and leaving america for a few weeks. it turns out, however, that among the places she's most wanted to see all her life have been china's great wall, the terracotta warrior in xian, and angkor wat near siem reap, cambodia.
we checked the great wall off that list yesterday; the other two shall be similarly completed within the next few weeks.
i'd like to add that i am uber-proud of my mom for being here. she arrived tuesday afternoon and we've had 4.5 days here already in beijing, and there've been some cultural hiccups (to be expected), but she's hanging in there and has already shown a good amount of gumption just in coming here at all. i mean, china is not the easiest place i've been to before. it's not like her first international trip was to france or somewhere like that: it's very, very different here, and it means a lot to me that she came here, and that she's doing better every day, and hopefully making great memories that will last a lifetime.
mushy stuff aside and back to the story. we opted for a package tour from our hotel yesterday morning, so a minibus driver picked us up just before eight in the morning. we set out to pick up a few more tourists: a young dutch couple and five australians. we fought our way through the brual beijing morning traffic, all the while hearing interesting tidbits about the city, both past and present, from tony, our heavily accented but very knowledgeable guide.
these tours are a bit of ruse, in that they offer air conditioned comfort and whatnot all for one affordable price, but you also have to stop at predetermined shopping stores, usually government-owned and sponsored, to shop for jade or silk or other knick-knacky stuff that i could care less about. oh well, the stops weren't for that long - and i'd brought a book - and mom ended up buying a cool jade christmas tree ornament that will always reminder her of the time she was, for some odd reason, in china.
we stopped for awhile at the emporers' tombs, where leaders of the past had been laid to rest for millenia, guarded by huge, elaborately detailed stone animals and guardians. it was already quite hot and humid at 10 a.m. and i was dripping sweat by the time i'd walked the 1.5 mile pathway, covered by weeping willows from which emited the sounds of thousands of unseen insects. i was happy when, at the conclusion of this section of the trip, the driver said we'd have time to rest before our next stop, as the drive would take an hour and a half.
we ate lunch after the second of the two predetermined stops at government stores and didn't make it to the great wall, about 120 KM northeast of beijing above a small town called matinyahu, until 1:30 p.m. matinyahu was further away, but the guidebooks and online all said that it was preferable to the more heavily touristed parts of the wall most close to beijing, near the city of badailing.
we parked at matinyahu and the guide told us to be back to the bus by 3:30, so after all that driving and forced shopping, we only ended up with two hours at the wall. but that was actually enough, considering how tired the climb made me.
i'd like to report that i jogged with ease up to the great wall of china, which ran along the peaks of the mountain in the matinyahu section, but the truth is much less impressive. in fact, it's downright pathetic, although i do take some pride in the fact that i made it at all.
not to the top, mind you, but to the ropeway station. in my defense, the station was like halfway up the mountain,and the pathway leading to it was paved with very uneven cobblestones, and it went up and up and up, and on and on and on, at like at a very steep angle. i had to pause a few times on the way up, and many people passed me by, and my 55-year-old mother was waiting for me at the top of hte mountain by the time i'd huffed and puffed my way up there, moving slowly, like a semi truck ascending a steep grade in low gears at a slow speed, but i made it.
i was pouring sweat by the time i reached the base of the aerial tramway station, and was quite nonplussed when i found that it had four flights of stairs to get to where you board the ropeway. i chatted it up with some guys from an egyptian tour group who had also had their asses kicked by the walk up to the station (bear in mind that the fitter among visitors were hiking half an hour up a zillion stairs to the top of the mountain).
my knees were killing me and my pulse was beating pretty good as i rode up five minutes in the cable car, over pine forests, towards the wall, which snaked away over distant peaks in both directions. then i got to the top and found -- guess what! -- more stairs! darn! i really need to hit the stairmaster when i get home, because i was dying as i leaned against the great wall and looked for my mom. i found her quickly, however, and she told me she was proud of me for making it because regardless of my fatness, it was a good haul up to the station.
the wall itself was spectacular, but you've seen it before, and i'm getting tired (nearly midnight here), so i'm gonna cut this entry off pretty soon. mom and i took some photos, admired the views, talked about how the wall had taken 900 years to build and stretched for thousands of miles, and then we took the ropeway back down.
coming down the mountain wasn't as bad as going up had been, although i had some pretty good jelly legs going by the time i made it (without tripping, much to my delight) down to the parking lot, as trucks that go slowly up grades must also use a lot of breaking power to keep the load under control on the way down.
all in all, a great day. anytime you can see something like the great wall, it's a good day, but more than actually seeing the wall, i liked the look of excitement i saw on my mom's face as we explored it. it made all the climbing, all the stairs, all the sweating and sore knees, more than worth it.
i'd do it all again in a heartbeat.
"i knew all that eating would pay off someday!"
a suggestion from alert, long-time reader scott andrews led to an incident in the forbidden city the other day that enabled me to:
a)use my capitalism skills to earn some money here in a communist country
and
b)horrify my mother.
so it was kind of like killing two birds with one stone!
as you may have noticed if you know me, i am a bit on the chunky side, a fact which is not lost on, oh, say, *everybody* in asia. it started years ago with cute little japanese grandmothers coming up and hugging my buddha-esque belly and saying i was a good soul, and has evolved into fan club branches in thailand, nepal, malaysia, mongolia, and any other asian country where there are crowds of people who are more then willing to gawk, stare, and photograph a chunky brotha.
it's not so bad in big cities, where the local populace may have had previous exposure to super-sized americans, but at places that draw out the yokels (see the nadaam festival entry from a few weeks ago), the cameras end up a-clickin'.
people were taking pictures of me right and left at the forbidden city, which is one of china's biggest tourist draws. it was where generation after generation of emporers and concubines lived for thousands of years, inaccessible to the public until the 1920s. it has all sorts of halls and pavilions and carved figures and guilded roofs and stuff like that, but i was a bigger draw than any of that, and i decided that all these camera-bearing chinese shouldn't get away with pictures for free, so i started charging one yuan ($1 = 7.5 yuan) for a photo, three for two yuan.
at first it was a trickle. i was surprised and shocked when the first person actually understood what i was saying and took a one-yuan note from his pocket before posing next to me. the next one came a bit later, and then another, and then another, and then another. it got really intense in front of the hall of eternal enlightenment, or something like that, when people were actually thrusting money at me, and i was making change for larger bills, and one guy paid 10 yuan for 10 different poses with me (quite comical). this went on and on for a good 15 minutes - i kid you not. my mom and annette just stood back and watched the semi-circle of people around me, shouting something about being next (i couldn't tell - my mandarin's still not that good)...my mom was cringing the whole time, though, especially when i yelled out "i knew all that eating would pay off someday!"
as quickly as the tempest had begun, however, it ended. the maelstromthe ebb and flow had come and gone, leaving me with a shirt pocked bulging with crumbled up yuan and a lone US dollar from a guy who really wanted a photo but didn't have any one yuan notes. including the dollar, i made approximately 52 yuan (about seven bucks) for my work, and all i had to sell was any sense of pride that i had left!
it was very hot and humid, as is normal in beijing in the summer, and my throat was parched from talking and laughing so much. fortnately, we soon came upon a section of the forbidden city that i referred to as "the palace of refreshments," where i purchased three bottles of ice water and a frozen yogurt (orange - delicious), happy that i had earned the money myself, right there in the middle of all the madness.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Chinese madness!
So busy of late that i fear i am slipping behind on the ol' blog, but i intend to rectify that situation sometime soon...in the meantime, here's some cool pix of our first few days in beijing, where we've been joined by a special guest star on the magical mystery tour -- my mom, making her international debut after 87 years of not leaving the united states! sorry, ma...hee hee!
Monday, July 16, 2007
beijing
arrived in beijing this morning after flying from chinggis khan international airport in ulanbaatar to tianjin international airport in tianjin, china. from there, we took a 100 KM bus ride (free with our plane tickets!) into central beijing, where we were dropped off in the middle of a city busily preparing for next summer's olympics. they should just put a giant "under construction" sign over this whole mutha. there are so many new expressways going up all over, and so many new skyscrapers, some rising from the ground at odd, eye-catching angles, bursting forth. not that you can see much of this from any distance because the air quality here is atrocious. if i were an olympic athlete planning on being here in 2008, i'd start training now by smoking a pack or two each day.
we ate lunch at pizza hut and then taxied it over to the guesthouse i set up online a few days ago; we all fell asleep through the early evening. now amanda and i are at a smoky internet cafe (where i'd bet access to sites like "freetibet.org" are blocked) and annette is...somewhere. my mom gets here tomorrow afternoon; she's probably waking up in california right now, freaked out of her head that she's gonna fly from ONT to san francisco to beijing, half a world away from everything she's ever known. but she doesn't have anything to worry about. it's not that strange: i'll be there when she gets off the plane, and there's pizza hut, and the transformers movie is playing at the theater below this internet cafe.
adios.
we ate lunch at pizza hut and then taxied it over to the guesthouse i set up online a few days ago; we all fell asleep through the early evening. now amanda and i are at a smoky internet cafe (where i'd bet access to sites like "freetibet.org" are blocked) and annette is...somewhere. my mom gets here tomorrow afternoon; she's probably waking up in california right now, freaked out of her head that she's gonna fly from ONT to san francisco to beijing, half a world away from everything she's ever known. but she doesn't have anything to worry about. it's not that strange: i'll be there when she gets off the plane, and there's pizza hut, and the transformers movie is playing at the theater below this internet cafe.
adios.
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