Satellite Maps of the Trip

Suzhou

Hangzhou

Shanghai

Thanksgiving Week

On Wednesday I went to see Abigail Washburn play at the MIDI School
of Modern Music. She is an American bluegrass musician and her
boyfriend is Bela Fleck, one of the more famous Banjo players. He
played with her and her band. I went with this guy that plays
ultimate and we had an adventure finding the school. We were told to
take a series of buses that took us into the mountains on one side of
Beijing. At the stop, we had no clue where the school was. It was big
fields with a highway and some nondescript buildings. One place
looked promising but the armed Army guard at the gate and uniformed
officers walking around indicated it wasn't. So I called the school
and they said I was right there, to walk down this small road next to
a gas station. So we did, this road was completely nondescript. We
passed some construction worker dorms. We certainly didn't think we
were at a school. I asked a few different guys we saw to help me by
showing them my flyer and they waved me off like they couldn't read.
So we kept walking and finally saw a building with music notes on it
and then the Abigail Washburn flyer. This place was completely
nondescript. There were very small one floor dorms and one building
where the performance was. It was just a big room with a stage. So
the room was full of Chinese music students and then me and my
friend. It was good music, she can sing in Chinese, the musicians
were pretty good. So that was fun.

On Thanksgiving I was invited by one of Michael Carroll's friends,
Cara Vu, to eat dinner with her family. Her parents work for the US
embassy and got a turkey through the embassy. The mom put forth quite
a spread and I did it justice. A bunch of this girl's friends from
school came over and gossiped the whole time and didn't eat too much
so I focused on eating my share and a few other people's. I even got
some decent leftovers. Cara's sister goes to UVA, and her dad said
"oh you are of college age, do you want a glass of wine?" That made
Cara angry because he won't let her drink, she is 16. She said that
I'm only 3 years older than her and can't drink in the states. So it
was a nice dinner.

On Friday I went to this lake with all of these "hutongs" which are
traditional Beijing houses. It consists of alleys with walls all
around and you walk through the doors into a courtyard with 2-4
residences on the sides. The girl that went to try to watch the
football game with me is sometimes a tour guide and so I asked her to
take me around. I went with her and her friend. On the way back on
the subway there was this one girl that said hi to me in line and was
looking at me on the train. It was very crowded and my 2 friends like
looking at "beauty girls". So they were giggling when they saw this
girl and pointed her out to me. Then the girl started talking to me
and asked me for my phone number. I sensed a little bit of jealousy
from my party, one wanted me to say that she was my girlfriend. So
that was amusing.

Shanghai trip

Last week I went to Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai with my school.
The day before we left I was invited to play in a soccer game at some
university. It would be international students versus the school
team. A free dinner and party afterwards. But the day of the game
they told me it was cancelled but I could still come to the party. So
I brought 3 friends and we went looking for a free dinner. We get to
this school and we are taken to the party. The girl told us to walk
quickly because they were waiting for us. We get into this room in a
school building and its full of about 100 or 200 Chinese students
sitting in chairs around a dance floor with a disco ball and music,
doing nothing. They see us and everyone started clapping. That
shocked us. We were then told to sit amongst the students and chat
with them. I ended up eating a piece of pizza no bigger than my
thumb. I met a bunch of people there.

So on Sunday my school took off for Suzhou, which is near Shanghai.
We had about 3 tour buses full of people. We took a train at 7pm. It
was a "hard sleeper" which has rooms with 6 beds stacked 3 high on
either side. The beds aren't that hard and I found it quite
comfortable, even though I was on the top and space is generally
limited. So I talked with some Vietnamese girls from my school and
their teacher who was in my room. The girls work for Maersk which is
a big shipping company.

We arrived early in the morning and went to our hotel to eat
breakfast. They served hot orange drink, like Tang. That was weird.
The city of Suzhou was not really impressive at all, even though the
annoying tour guide seemed to describe it as very nice. It has a lot
of canals. He claimed the buildings were of the old classic style but
the thing is that in China there is no central AC on most buildings
so each room has an air conditioning unit on the outside of the
building and then there are always electrical tubes for wires and
such covering the facades. And they always have huge signs covering
the facade with Chinese characters written all over them. A
restaurant might have a huge sign with all of its dishes on it. So
these old classic buildings might look nice if they weren't covered
with air conditioning units, wires and signs.

What Suzhou is famous for is its gardens. We went to the "Humble
Administrator's Garden". That place was nice. You can see pictures on
my Flickr site.



This picture was pretty funny. This boat was used for
cleaning the ponds and I wanted to stand on it. Doing this elicited
quite a reaction from the Asians that saw me. The teacher who was
right there kept telling me to be careful and to hurry up, and I
heard a bunch of people gasp when I got on the boat. But thats half
the reason I did it. So yeah.

We went to lunch at a silk factory "museum". Its a small place but
pretty touristy. It was cool to see how they produce the silk thread.
Of course the 4 different stores selling tons of silk stuff on the
way out of the museum and the runway for the fashion show we received
was far bigger than the factory floor itself.

The next day we drove to Hangzhou about 2 hours from Suzhou. I liked
Hangzhou the most. We were driving along the highway, the land was
really flat and mostly farmland with these houses. I think they build
the houses by pouring concrete, no wood framing. The 3 story houses
looked fairly awkward since they weren't accompanied by trees and the
streets were pretty minimal. They were just there. Anyways, it was
really flat and we reach a city and we're winding our way through it
when all of sudden we are at this lake and there are mountains and
the city looks cool, as in it has trees and grass and the like. We
stopped to take a boat out on the lake. The lake was pretty but I
didn't bring my camera since I filled up my memory card the day
before. (Christmas gift idea, either large capacity compact flash
cards or a portable hard drive that has a way to store pictures so
that I don't have to lug my computer when traveling). This lake was
called Xi Hu 西湖 (west lake). It is very pretty and the Chinese
believe that by visiting it, the girls will get prettier. At least
that is what I gathered from a Chinese description of it. Then we
went to this place, I think called Leaping tiger spring. The tigers
gave the monks that lived there a spring so they wouldn't have to
walk really far for water. 3 friends and I climbed up to the top of
this mountain giving us a great view of the city of Hangzhou. We saw
the lake and some river which cuts the city in half, I forget which
river. When I get my friends pictures I will post those. We then went
to a nearby Buddhist temple which was packed with people. It had some
caves that you could walk in and then there was the temple. Some
monks were conducting a ceremony and outside the temple you could buy
incense and burn it. People were buying that and doing some prayer to
the 4 directions. This temple was on the side of a mountain and there
were buildings that kept going up, it was pretty neat. The place was
packed with people, but it seemed to be a regular temple where monks
lived.

The next day we headed to Shanghai. On the way we stopped at a town
called XiTang 西塘. I thought this was a bathroom break so I walked
out without my camera, and when we left the bus was locked. But I
wish I had my camera. Xi Tang is basically a small town in the middle
of flat farmland. However there is a canal through the middle of it
and the buildings go right up to the canal. It was very neat. It is
obviously a tourist spot but it was nice because the people weren't
hawks, if you wanted to buy something ok, if not ok. I walked back up
into these houses. It is very hard to describe but it was sort of
like a maze. Luckily I've got some of my friend's pictures posted.

We continued to Shanghai which is a huge city. Not as big as Beijing
in area, but it has a huge population. Somewhere above 14 million,
6th biggest in the world. So there are tons of huge buildings. We
went to the river to look at the Pearl of the Orient which is a big
tower, and then there is also the Millennium Tower. See pictures.
Then they took us to this shopping area. I think its called Imperial
Palace or something and I thought it was something cool but no, it
was your token shopping area. Fortunately my friend had been there
before and knew about the basement which was like an antiques and
arts market. It was relatively empty except for the shop keepers and
they were just chatting with each other. There was some cool stuff
like old documents and random things. I wanted to buy some ID that
would make me look like I was in the Red Guard or something but I
couldn't find one. So that was better than being upstairs outside
with the hawks. I don't like how they took us shopping though. That
night we had free time and I went back to look at the towers which
was nice.

The next day we went to the Shanghai Museum. It is an art museum of
Chinese history. I saw furniture from different dynasties which was
neat, I saw pottery, jade carvings, Chinese paintings, etc. There I
learned how change the ISO setting on my camera to get more light out
of a situation so that I wouldn't have to use the flash or use a slow
shutter speed. That was a breakthrough for me. Supposedly after we
left Arnold Schwarzenegger came to talk about the Special Olympics.

Then we took a train home and got to Beijing at 7 am. This was a
"soft sleeper" which was a little nicer, only 4 beds per room, they
gave you slippers and a toothbrush and a meal, and there are doors
for the rooms, but the bed wasn't much different. When we arrived in
Beijing it was cold. Shanghai's weather was nice, I wore a tshirt or
sometimes my jacket. But it had also cooled off in Beijing a lot. It
has warmed up a bit, being cold in the mornings and evenings but nice
during the middle of the day. Long sleeve tshirt weather at lunch. I
think it is warmer than average for this time of year.

Last Saturday I tried to go watch the UVA VTech game. I jokingly
invited this Chinese girl to go with me when she asked what I was up
to. She actually said yes even though we would return extremely late.
My guidebook said this one pub had ESPN and was a must for football
fans. However upon arriving there at 1am and flipping through their
channels I discovered it was a lame British ESPN with British soccer.
So we went home but her dorm closes at midnight and so she had to
stay at my place. So I followed UVA's destruction with the online
score updates while sleeping on my couch.

I'm going back to Shanghai in two weeks for a day of ultimate with
the Shanghai teams. We will stop playing outdoor this weekend because
it will get very cold soon.

Recap

What I've done since Hong Kong:

Bought a pair of Timberland work boots. 140 RMB ($17.50). The initial
price was 280 RMB ($35). Similar bargaining techniques as the memory
card reader, except this time I had a Chinese girl with me who worked
some magic. We saw much cheaper but they were all bad copies of
Timberlands, the ones I bought look real. The cheaper ones were
probably just as good, but oh well.

Seen Tsinghua (Qinghua) University. This is the second best
university in China behind Peking/Beijing University. Supposedly very
elite. The same girl that helped me get the boots introduced me to
her brother. He is working on a computer engineering masters at
Tsinghua. He had just come back from a large world conference on some
sort of networking in NanJing China. He showed me the conference book
which was published and the paper that he wrote with 2 other guys
from his department. It was all real complex stuff but maybe one day
I'll get it. He was obviously very proud of both his paper and his
university. They were both very impressive, the Tsinghua campus is
very large compared to mine and for being in Beijing it has a nice
and quiet feel to it, even though there were still a good bit of
people. It is large enough to provide a barrier between you and the
city.

Went to a party hosted by a few of about 18 Tongans living in
Beijing. Some of them go to my school, one is the daughter of the
Military Advisor to China and the Ambassador. I don't know where
exactly Tonga is, but its an island in the south Pacific, the people
are polynesian. They were cool.

Had a few decent conversations with cab drivers. They are infamous
for their horrible Beijing accent, but surprisingly I've been able to
talk to them. I've talked about their families, their careers as
drivers, the NBA and different players. One guy told me that he was
Mai Ke Qiao Dan's friend, since they were born in the same year.
(Michael Jordan). I've learned words as well, such as truck and
another word for bus, but I don't remember them. Its hard for me to
learn words in that manner, since I didn't use them again, and since
Chinese words are built out of one syllable smaller words, they lack
uniqueness. I've heard all of the possible Chinese word sounds, so
its not like something sounds new. If a word applies to me or holds
some interest to me, then I will remember it.

I've been called a flower hearted big radish by my language partner.
She told me that when I found out what that meant, I would come after
her with a knife. But then Mrs. Schuler told me it meant Playboy. Who
knows why. Whether that applies to me or not, I don't know, but I
have no clue why she called me that. She also told me that she has
eaten more salt that I have eaten rice, or just food in general.
Since Chinese rarely use salt that means she has eaten a lot, and is
therefore more experienced than me. Again, I don't know why she said
that, but she does like to elevate herself and China above me.
Sometimes I think she says in Chinese, something about Chinese vs
American intelligence. After she mentioned Shenzhou 6, the second
manned Chinese rocket which launched in October, she said, "Chinese
are so smart". It sounded sort of weird. However it's not my style to
rip other countries or patriotic individuals. I think this was after
I said Beijing smelled bad by noting the notorious Beijing air. She
took offense at that.

Three tests in the next 2 days, not really worried. One test is ten
minutes of speaking and it means I can sleep until 9:30. Next week is
our school trip to Shanghai and a bunch of other cities in the
Shanghai "Golden Triangle" area. Any souvenir requests?
Two weeks after going to Shanghai with school I will go back to
Shanghai for a "friendly weekend of ultimate frisbee" Its basically a
grudge match between 2 Beijing teams and 2 Shanghai teams after the
Hong Kong tournament.

I've been invited to a Thanksgiving party by this girl from Virginia
in high school here that I met. Her family works at the embassy and
has a party each year so don't worry, I will celebrate Thanksgiving.
However with the closing of the poultry markets in Beijing due to
avian flu and I think the lack of Turkey's in China, I don't know
what the main course is.