Beijing

I spent 4 days in Beijing, and while I was originally not planning on making a stop there, one thing changed my mind: The Cangelosi Cards. One of my favorite jazz bands of all time, it just so happened that the Cards were in town that weekend and were getting ready to play two shows back to back in Beijing. Since the last time I saw them was in Virginia Beach back in 2007, I decided I couldn’t miss it.

Tianjin Eye

The first day in Beijing, I joined in the Rocky Horror Picture Show party being put on by Beijing Swing, which was a riot to say the least! The next day was the Cards’ first show, and as soon as I entered the venue I ran into Tamar, the singer, who instantly recognized me. I couldn’t believe it, but she remembered seeing me the last time in VA Beach, because at that time we had talked about how I had just started learning Chinese. Here I am 3 years later and we meet in Beijing! The rest of the night was incredible, dancing away to their music till late in the morning.

The following day we did it again, and this time even better! The Cards gave an epic performance, and some of the dancers performed some routines live to the music. It was two of the best nights of dancing in a row that I’d had in a long time! The next day I headed to Tianjin to visit for a day and met with some professors at Tianjin University who showed me around the city. At the time I was considering working with them come spring of 2011 (though I ended up working in Beijing where I am now). I found Tianjin to be an extremely beautiful city, one very different from others I’ve visited, and it seemed a lot less crowded. It seemed like a city I could enjoy living in for a while.

Guilin

Guilin

I left Beijing in the morning, but my flight to Guilin was booked from Shanghai, so I spent one more night in Shanghai surprising all my dancer friends when I showed up. I flew into Guilin airport on November 5th and took a bus to the middle of the city where I went to Guanxi Normal University to meet with my buddy Robert’s girlfriend who was letting me spend the night while he was out of town. Robert and his brother run a school there, the Chinese Language Institute, and showed me around. I have to say I am very impressed with the program they have set up, and if I had the time I would considering studying there myself. I explored a tiny bit then crashed and prepared to visit Yangshuo in the morning.

Yangshuo

On the Li River

In the morning I went down to Yangshuo along with some of the CLI students, accompanying them on a field trip. We rode motor boats down the Li River marveling at the Karsts, then hiked through the small town of Xiping on our way to Yangshuo. We arrived in the evening, dropped our bags, and headed to a grand theater built on a lake where we saw Zhang Yimou’s famous show “Impression” (刘三姐). It was quite a fantastic sight to see, as most of the performance was done on small boats on the water. The choreography was breathtakingly complex and timed to a perfection that can only be achieved in China.

Climbing the Wineglass

The next day we rented bikes and rode around all over town seeing the many beautiful sites Yangshuo had to offer, including a famous mud cave where half the students stripped to their bathing suits and jumped in the mud. I opted to chill in the hot springs myself instead of freezing mud! Later that day, the students all went back to Guilin, but I decided to stay for one more day so I could do some rock climbing. I found a small climbing store, “Black Rock Climbing,” and booked a day with a couple Norwegian girls also looking to climb. In the morning, our guide, Weihua, brought us out to a cliff face called Wineglass and showed us the ropes. We spent the whole morning climbing, and in only a few hours we were pretty beat. It was an incredible experience though, because as you climb higher and higher you can see a remarkable view of the hundreds of karsts surrounding you. I now understand why the whole world talks about Yangshuo as a mecca for climbers.

On top of Moon Hill

Moon Hill

In the evening I headed over to Moon Hill mountain, famous for the huge hole in the middle, which was also full of climbers. I hiked past the “warning don’t go here” signs and got all the way to to top, where I caught an unforgettable sunset amongst the karsts. Later that night, I went over to The Giggling Tree hostel, a place I had heard of the very first time I visited China and had been wanting to see for years. It is a small place owned and run by a Dutch couple who bought the land and converted 17 different farm houses into a hostel. It is on the outskirts of Yangshuo in the middle of farms, and by far one of the most unique hostels in the world. It was also one of the nicest places I’ve ever stayed at in China, and quite affordable for a dorm room (only 50 RMB a night!). A night at The Giggling Tree was the perfect end to my 2010 backpacking adventures in China.

The Giggling Tree

I headed back to Guilin and hopped on my 20 hour train back to Shanghai, and while everything started nicely, things took an unfortunate turn for the worse. About 10 hours in, I got horribly sick…vomiting sick. Throwing up on a Chinese train for 10 hours has got to be one of the worst physical challenges I’ve endured in my life…and things only got worse. When I arrived in Shanghai, I at least had a day to recover at Bruce and Julia’s before boarding my flight for Taipei in the morning. In the morning, with nearly no strength left in my body, I managed to make it to the airport, only to find my flight had been delayed 3 hours. We boarded the plane, and waited another 2 hours before even taking off. By the time I landed in Xiamen, my connection to Taipei had left, and I was stuck for the night, sick, weak, and frustrated. Luckily I still had one extra day on my visa, and the airport put me up in a nice hotel. All in all it took an entire 24 hours until I got back on a plane for Taipei. When I landed, I was extremely relieved to find JC and Mindy waiting on me in the airport, and my Taiwan adventure began.

While it was a rough last 2 days traveling from Shanghai to Taipei, the previous month was full of incredible experiences and moments I will cherish forever. I had danced for 9 days in Shanghai and visited Hangzhou, Huangshan, Nanjing, Beijing, Guilin, and Yangshuo. I experienced so much in such little time I had to write about it in 4 parts, and didn’t finish it until now, 4 months afterwards! When I look back at the time I spent, I realize how lucky I am to have been able to see so many amazing places in this world, and it makes me very thankful to have had these experiences.

The next morning I visited the Johns Hopkins Nanjing Center at Nanjing University, where I am considering studying this fall. I began a tour of the school by sitting in on a couple lectures – one in English on business economics in the Enron case and the other in Chinese on modern US/China relations. Both were quite interesting, and I could tell from the Chinese one that this program was serious about language. Afterwards, I met with Liz Muller who showed me around the campus and answered questions. Walking down the hallway, we passed two American students carrying violins dressed in suits. It turned out they were heading to a dress rehearsal for a performance that night with the Nanjing University Symphony Orchestra, and they invited me to join! The show was all traditional chinese music, and it was mostly a celebration of the 20th anniversary of their music program. The 2-hour performance included mostly older men and women singing Chinese songs, and then the orchestra joined in for the last 45 minutes. Afterwards, we went up on stage and got a photo with the director (right) who reminded me of a Chinese Gene Wilder. On the metro ride back, I got a great glimpse of the study body at the Nanjing Center. All of them came from different parts oft he US and from all different backgrounds and majors, yet they were all here working hard at their Chinese while having a blast living in China. By the end of the night, I decided I would definitely be putting in an application for the Nanjing Center.

The next morning I started out by heading to the house of John Rabe, a German who saved thousands of Chinese during the Japanese invasion of Nanjing in WWII by establishing a safe zone. Unfortunately, the house was only open on weekdays, so I went on to the Ji Ming Temple, and active temple with a huge pagoda from where you can see the whole city. After passing through, I continued onto the old city wall and walked along it for a bit before going down the the lakeside park and exploring around there. I was definitely one of the most beautiful parts of Nanjing and it reminded me of NYC’s central park, this huge green space in the middle of a metropolis. Later on I visited the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum (中山陵) on Purple Mountain. Known as the Father of China, Sun Yatsen (a.k.a. Zhong Shan) is kind of like a Ben Franklin figure in Chinese history, laying down the foundation for establishing a Republic after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Although the Communists fought and eventually beat him during the civil war in the 20s and 30s, the whole country still honors him as China’s first great modern leader. His tomb and memorial clearly shows it too – an epic temple with deep blue roof tiles at the top of hundreds of steps on a mountain. It was quite an honor to finally see the Zhongshan himself.

I finished the day by going all the way across town to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, established to commemorate the 300,000 lives that were brutally and mercilessly taken by the Japanese rape of Nanjing in WWII. The crimes committed were so atrocious and so unspeakable that even Nazi German soldiers who were posted in Nanjing and witnessed the events wrote in their journals about how disgusted they were with the inhumane acts of the Japanese! China is often spoken of as the forgotten front during WWII, and it is rarely mentioned in any western history books, even though the whole war essentially started there. As the sun began to fall, I took one last solemn look at the memorial and then headed back to the hostel.

To my surprise, I returned to a very different place than from where I had left. Through all the traveling, I had forgotten that the next day was Halloween, and the hostel was throwing a party to celebrate. All of the foreign students at Nanjing University showed up and partied until late into the night, not something I was too thrilled about considering the 5:00 am get up I had in the morning to catch my flight to Beijing!  In the end, I found the city to be charming, calm, extremely welcoming, and bursting out the seams with history. Spending a year there (if I got into the Nanjing Center) would definitely be something I would like to do.  In the morning I caught a flight to Beijing, where part IV of my trip begins.

After arriving in Tunxi on the night of October 24, I scrambled a plan together and decided to get up at 5:30 am to catch a bus to the mountain. The weather was supposed to still be bad, but I decided to risk it and get on up the mountain. On the morning bus I met an English girl, Charlotte, and a Taiwanese girl, Mayling (高美齡), and we decided to hike up the mountain together since we were all staying at the same hotel that night, the “White Cloud Hotel,” a fitting name considering we were basically in a giant cloud for the whole hike. As we hiked, we passed multiple men carrying loads of goods on a stick across their back. Straight through the cold rain, these guys hiked with barely anything for shoes or clothes on, some of them carrying loads easily weighing 80-90 lbs straight to the top of the mountain. They were a great source of motivation for us to keep pushing though the weather just got wetter and colder, especially since we could not see more than 10 ft in front of us through the fog.

Nearing the hotel, Charlotte and I stopped at a smaller hotel to get something to eat. We ordered a bowl of fried rice, the cheapest thing on the menu (prices were outrageous on the mountain!). While the waiter motioned with her hands that the bowl might be just enough for the two of us, we ended up with a bowl big enough to feed a family of 10! We ate not even a third before packing the rest and pushing on another 1.5 hours to the hotel.

By the time we finally reached the hotel, we had hiked for about 4 hours straight up steps, and over the last hour it had gotten quite cold. I only brought a pair of pants, a t-shirt, and a light rain jacket, so needless to say I was pretty freezing for the last bit. We showered and warmed up in the rooms and then went back to the lobby where we waited and sipped horribly watered down, overpriced hot chocolate. It was 2:00 pm, and the weather only got worse. By night fall all we had left for food was the left over rice from lunch, so we ate a bit and then went back to our rooms.

I shared the dorm room that night with just one other Chinese guy, with whom I entered into the standard conversation I have now experienced dozens of times in China. If you are an American who speaks Chinese and you are in China, you will inevitably have a conversation with multiple Chinese people that goes something like this:

Chinese guy (c): “American is great! China is not good. America is much better.”
Me (m): “Yeah, but China is good too.”
c: “Yeah, but China is so far behind America, at least 50 years back.”
m: “Well, I don’t know about that, but China is developing very quickly.”
c: “Yeah, but not fast enough. Say, you Americans are pretty good friends with Japan, right?”
m: “Yeah, we have good relations with Japan.”
c: “Yeah, but we Chinese, we don’t like Japan. You know, they never apologized for the atrocities they committed against us in WWII.”
m: “Yeah, I know. It was really terrible”
c: “Even Germany apologized. But not Japan. Japan is really terrible. But you know, you USA dropped the bombs on Japan. It was a really good thing!”
m: “Well, many people died, so it was not all good, but it did pretty much end the war.”
c: “Yeah, but Japan is bad. You should have dropped more than just 2 bombs.”

And that’s usually where the conversation ends. I’m not really sure why this topic always comes up, but for some reason the Chinese always bring up Japan and the bombs when talking to an American. Over the past two years, I’ve had this exact same conversation (almost verbatim) countless times. I wonder if it’s because I’m younger and they want to make sure I know the history?

In the morning, we got up to see the sunrise, but the weather seemed even worse, and much colder. It had dropped below freezing overnight, and while it made for a very cool sight to see all the trees frozen with ice, I could barely feel my limbs, so we went back to bed. Unfortunately, Charlotte had to leave, but I decided to wait in hopes for better weather the next day. As I was booking another night, Will walked into the lobby, the guy I met in Hangzhou just two days prior! We explored a bit more that afternoon, but it was so cold that we ended up just staying in the rest of the day. That night we shared some ramen and beer that a Chinese guy gave us since we were starving and had nothing left to eat on the mountain.

It was definitely worth the wait, because in the morning we got up and saw the most incredible sunrise of my life. The clouds had lowered over night, and we watched as the brilliant orange off in the distance creeped its way up over a sea of cotton clouds below. Since there were (of course) hundreds of Chinese tourists blocking the view, I jumped over the fence and climbed my way around the outer ledge to watch. It was quite safe and I found a solid rock to sit on, but the Chinese behind me were terrified by the crazy foreigner going beyond the boundary. One man even offered to use his belt to tie me to the fence!

After the sunrise, Will and I got breakfast then headed out to the western steps, the area famous for its cantilevered stairs and walkways that hang out off of shear cliffs. The steps were exhausting, but the view over the next few hours was absolutely unreal. We both expected a pterodactyl to come flying overhead at any moment – it was seriously like land of the lost or something! Every turn just got better and better, and since it was such a difficult part to hike through, none of the Chinese tourists went there. We had the whole place to ourselves!

“No need to see 100 mountains after Huangshan.”  Of all the places I’ve traveled to in China, Huangshan just took one of the top seats, up there with the Tiger Leaping Gorge. The fact that I had to suffer through freezing raining with barely any clothes and nothing good to eat for 2 days made the whole experience that much better in the end. By noon we were back at the hotel. Exhausted, we rode the cable car down and took a bus back to Tunxi where I took the best shower of my life and slept for 12 hours straight. In the morning, I took a 5-hour bus to Nanjing, where Part III of my trip begins.

I landed in Shanghai on October 13, 2010, around 1:30 pm Beijing time and proceeded to have the absolute smoothest travel experience of my life. I honestly couldn’t believe how well things went – my bad even came up just as I walked up to the baggage pick up. I got through customs with almost no wait, picked up a SIM card in the airport, called my friends Bruce and Julia who were hosting me in Shanghai, and hopped on the metro to their place. Everything seemed so familiar this time, and despite a year of living in the States, I immediately jumped back into Chinese. Bruce and Julia were a big part of that smooth transition too, because in addition to providing a very comfortable setting to get over the jet lag, they were great company and overwhelmingly helpful in every way. 5 stars to L’hotel Julia!

The very next night, I went dancing at the Melting Pot, and there is simply no better way to get over jet lag than to stay up late dancing with old friends who I haven’t seen in over a year! It was a huge reunion for me, and it began an unforgettable 9-day dancing streak. The next night (Friday) officially began “Swing Out Shanghai,” the city’s first ever international swing dancing event. Two years before in a bar in Hong Kong, the idea for the event was first hatched, and two years later it finally came to fruition.  For the next two days, it was non-stop dancing in Shanghai.  The opening dance was at C’est La Vie restaurant, followed by Saturday afternoon at Hengshan Park in the French Concession, then later that day at the Music Hall Court, then that night at the House of Blues and Jazz, and then finally the last dance at the Melting Pot Sunday night.  Friends from Beijing, Singapore, and Taiwan all came to the event which doubled our numbers and really made it a full blown lindy exchange.

As the chief DJ and music coordinator for the event, I was in charge of keeping the dance floor full, and my team of DJs really pulled through throughout the whole weekend (huge thanks to Akiko, Sam, Brian, and Chad).  The event ended, but then Monday night we were dancing again at the usual Monday night dances in Shanghai, so it sort of just kept going…and going, and going, and going, and…

…and then the Shanghai Expo performances began, called “Swing For All”featuring the Hong Kong Big Band.  It was Hong Kong week atthe Bao Steel stage, so the week was dedicated to a multitude of Hong Kong performers, which included the band and us, the dancers.  The band gave two performances on both Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.  Throughout the show, the dancers social danced down in front of the stage to the music, and a select few gave a few special choreographed performances as well.  At the very end, we did a jam to “Sing Sing Sing,” and the very last performance the crowd rushed the stage and cheered and clapped along with us.  It was by far the most fun I’ve ever had during a dance performance, and one of the most unique dance performances of my life as well.  I was so proud of all of the dancers and musicians there and so happy to share a small piece of the happiness we all experience when we are dancing with the local Chinese people.  Photos and videos of both SOS and Swing for All can be seen here.

So then it was Thursday, and once again we danced at the weekly Thursday night dances (day #8 of dancing if you’ve been counting).  And then it was Friday, and a few Shanghai dancer friends and I decided to visit the Shanghai World Expo.  After all, we all had our VIP “performer” passes that were still good, so we figured we should make use of them and try and get into as many country pavilions as we could.  In order, we went into USA, Peru, Columbia, Brazil, Canada, Venezuela, Argentina, Germany, and finally Spain.  The whole thing was quite arbitrary – we just started walking and asking who would let us in as VIP (only Chile denied us…freakin stiff Chilean door guard).  Over all, I was so glad we did not have to wait to get into any of the pavilion, because none of them were worth more than 30 minutes.  Some were better than others (Germany, Canada, Spain), but in general there wasn’t much to see or do that was truly amazing.  It was kind of like a lousier version of Epcot without rides.  The most fun we had was when Akiko and I crashed the Argentina pavilion by totally faking some Argentine Tango (see video below).  Right in the middle there was a large open space, so when they started playing tango music we started doing really smooth swing, and kind of pulled off a tango-esque feel.  By the end, hundreds of Chinese had circled us, snapping photos right and left.  They all seemed to think we were part of the show (in fact one of the actual Argentina workers asked us afterwards what style of tango it was because had never seen it before!).  We finished the night by crashing an outdoor concert at the Australian pavilion as well where we danced right up in front of the stage.

After it all, I headed back to Bruce and Julia’s then caught a train to Hangzhou first thing Saturday morning and began my 3-week trip backpacking through China, which I am just now finishing up.  It has been quite an adventure, and there will be a massive amount of writing, photos, and videos to come soon.  I leave for Shanghai tonight and then fly to Taipei Thursday to begin my studies there for the winter.  Still, it is only just now hitting me how significant the whole first week of dancing in Shanghai was historically.  It was the first of its kind, and hopefully the beginning of much more to come.  Maybe fifty years from now people will look back at the origins of swing dancing in China and write about us!  Heck, we even made the LOCAL NEWS!

WARRIOR DASH! That’s right – getting ready to spend this weekend in Quarryville, PN, racing in the most ridiculous race I’ve ever seen. It’s basically a big tailgate with a 5k obstacle course in the middle. I’ve been training all summer as I usually do, but I’m hoping it will pay off at the race. I even made a training video over the past weekend which you can view at my videos page or on Facebook. I fly out Friday and the race starts Saturday morning – so excited!

On a completely different note, song writing has been a rather recent hobby of mine. With every new life experience I encounter, I find myself reflecting upon them through music, and constantly come up with instrumentals that express certain feelings. I’ve come up with several full songs, but am always struggling to find matching lyrics for them. I was recently inspired, however, by fellow lindy hopper and singer-song writer Carsie Blanton (visit her website or her myspace). I briefly met Carsie at Hot Mess in Philadelphia this past July, but only as a dancer, and I had no idea how talented she is as a musician. However, I recently listened to her performance at Mountain Stage on NPR and was totally blown away by her fantastically witty lyrics and soft, gentle, and pure voice. Such a refreshing combination of poetry and music really inspired me to continue exploring songs I have written over the years. So thanks Carsie for really helping me with a fresh, new, inspiring sound, and hopefully someday I will finish these tunes and write them down as works of art.

Next Tuesday, October 12, I fly to Shanghai, China, where I will once again begin another adventure in Asia. This time, since I’ve graduated, I have more freedom to do whatever comes across my plate, so I’m pretty excited to see what I can find. I’m hoping to do some traveling in mainland China first (Nanjin, Three Gorges Dam, Xian, Guilin, Yangshuo) and then I’ll be at National Taiwan University for the winter studying mandarin. After that, who knows. I will be looking for work opportunities the whole time I am there, so if something comes up I will probably take it. Plans are pretty flexible for now. Next time I post something, I’ll probably be in China!

Another great feature of my job in Montana is that every month I get a week off and my company flies me anywhere I want to go in the US, so I have been able to attend a couple dance events here and there as well.  The first I attended was “Hot Mess” in Philadelphia on July 9-11, 2010.  True to the name, Hot Mess was one of the hottest weekends of the summer in Philly and the focus of the event was all fast dancing, accentuating the messiness.  Nonetheless, it was one of the most fun events I have attended in a long time and it was a good to finally work on my fast dancing, which has always been a week point for me.  The second event I attended was “Southern Belle Swing Bash” in Atlanta on August 13-15, 2010.  Another fantastic event by Michael and Jaya of Asheville, NC, SBSB was an event made specifically for follows.  All of the workshops were for follows only, and as a result leads were invited to join for free as long as we volunteered to help with the workshops.  I felt guilty for not having to pay for the event because it was so much fun for leads!  Besides the wonderful company I enjoyed staying with all weekend and the countless dances, I also competed in the open Jack & Jill and actually made it to the finals (check out my videos page to see the finals warm up dance).  While I did not place in the top 3,  it was my first time in a finals competition for a lindy hop J&J and I learned a lot from it.  Hopefully there will be more to come in the future!

Since the summer is coming closer to an end, I have already begun planning my next trip to China.  I will be flying out on October 12 to Shanghai to attend the first ever international swing dancing event there called “Swing Out Shanghai.”  When I lived there two years ago, the ideas for the event started to emerge, and now in the middle of the Shanghai World Expo the event will finally be held.  One of the best parts about it is we will actually perform on stage at the World Expo, making history for the whole world to see. After a few weeks in Shanghai, I will move to Taipei in Taiwan to begin a long and concentrated study of Mandarin.  All of my previous trips to China limited me to only 3 months of study at a time – just enough to get somewhere and then forget it.  This time, with the help of a 3 month scholarship by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, I will spend 6 months studying, giving me the much needed time to hopefully make some large strides with the language.  I will return home May 24, 2011.  It will be a long adventure, but I am confident that the investment I will make in Taiwan will be well worth it later in life, if not for the language skills, then for the life experiences I will encounter.

July 25:  Went to the Tiger Park in Harbin – got some great photos of tigers that I’ll post soon.
August 4:  Final exam in Chinese classes, closing ceremonies that afternoon/evening (I somehow got all A’s!).
August 5:  Took a train all day to Beijing, arrive at 7:30 pm and meet up with Josh (swing dancer in Beijing). Hung out with Josh and other dancers, spent the night at Josh’s.
August 6:  Flight to Seoul at 1:45 pm, arrive at 4:45 pm. Took a bus to Hapjeong station and was met by my friend Miyeoung. Stay at her place that night.
August 7:  Train to Pusan, dance in Pusan that night.
August 7 – 9:  Pusan swing festival! Dancing all night, all day.
August 9:  Train back to Seoul, dance that night in Seoul.

Now I’m back in Seoul. Even though I have been in Korea for about 4 days, today is really my first chance to go out and explore the city on my own, and I am about to go do that. So far my first impressions of Korea are that it is incredibly clean, nice, and fancy. The roads are kept in perfect shape and people actually drive inside the lanes. Seoul is one of the cleanest cities I’ve ever been to (for a city of this size). There is not one piece of trash on the road and all the buildings are spotless.
My biggest impression is simply that Korea is fancy. It’s become a running joke with my friends here that whenever I see something that surprises me they always say, “Yeah I know. It’s Korea. It’s fancy.” For example, McDonald’s uses hard plastic cups and washes them to reduce waste – it’s fancy. You can pick up a wireless internet signal just about anywhere – it’s fancy. There was a giant Starcraft gaming competition on the beach in Pusan – it’s fancy. Well, that last one maybe was not “fancy,” but I did witness it. A crowd of at least 2,000 people all sat in chairs watching two computer geeks battle it out in a Starcraft match on the beach. Two huge jumbo-trans projected the game while two announcers called the game play-by-play. It was like a football match but with computer games instead of athletes. Anyway, those are my first impressions of Korea. Now I’m going to go exploring and see what else I can find.

Friday, July 3, 2009
Friday night we all got on a night train to Dalian. Being the third time the whole group has traveled by train, I think we’re starting to get the hang of it. Things went smoothly and we had another night of singing songs and playing cards into the night at 140 km/hr.

Saturday, July 4, 2009
Saturday morning we arrived in Dalian. After breakfast at a Chinese fast food joint, we got on a bus to Jinshetan, which is about an hour northeast of Dalian.  So I was pretty bummed when I found out that we weren’t actually staying in Dalian, my old home town from last year. In Jinshetan, we went swimming at the beach, then in the afternoon everyone went to an amusement park. I still don’t really understand the decision to spend our time this way – both the beach and amusement park you can do in the States, and I felt it would have been a much better decision to actually stay in Dalian and see the city. Regardless, we had a good time at the beach, and then I took a train with a classmate back to Dalian to see my friends from the previous summer. We only got to hang out for a few hours, but it was great to see them again. That night we headed back to Jinshetan and celebrated the 4th of July with everyone. We had a huge fire and cooked hotdogs and smores on sticks. In the distance we saw a bunch of other fireworks going off, and it was comforting to know other Americans were in the town.

Sunday, July 5, 2009
We didn’t do a whole lot on Sunday. In the morning we took a bus out to a shipping port where we waited for about an hour to board our boat to Yantai. We spent the rest of the day riding the boat. It was a smooth ride and we got the VIP room with card tables, so it was a pretty sweet deal. In the afternoon I spent about 2 hours talking with some of our teachers in Chinese and had some wonderful conversations, taking notes all along the way.

Monday, July 6, 2009
We traveled to the Penglai Fortress the next morning where we learned about the Penglai mirage and about the Legends of the 8 Immortals. We took a motor boat ride in the afternoon and hiked the side of a small mountain to a temple. The weather was particularly hot that afternoon and a lot of people ended the day with red necks, myself included, but the view from the top was worth it.  That night we boarded another night train to Yanzhou.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tuesday morning we woke up in Yanzhou then took a bus to Qufu and spent the morning touring Confucius’s home. In the afternoon we went to Mencius’s home, one of Confucius’s most famous students. I took a lot of photos of the two areas, both which were rather large sort of parks filled with trees and ancient Chinese buildings. I wish I knew more about the history of the places because after a while everything started to look the same, and I could not distinguish the significance of one temple over the other. That night we had a delicious dinner, complete with scorpions as a local delight.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The next morning we took a bus to the Ling Yan Buddhist Temple near Mount Tai. It is said that if you go to Mount Tai but you don’t go to the Ling Yan Temple, then you haven’t actually gone to Mount Tai. I wrote my name in English and Chinese in a book in one of the temples which is said to bring good fortune. The temple was gorgeous, but the weather didn’t necessarily agree. Just before lunch, the rain started to pour, and it didn’t let up for most of the day. That afternoon, we all put on ponchos and began the hike up the 1500 meter tall Mount Tai. We took a bus half way up then walked for about an hour literally inside a rain cloud up seemingly never-ending stairs. At the top, some people got lost because you couldn’t see more than 10 ft in front of yourself. We were supposed to get up the next morning around 4:00 to see the sunrise, but the fog was just too bad.

Thursday, July 9, 2009
The next morning we broke up into two groups. One hiked all the way back down the mountain. The other group, the one I went with, stayed at the top for the morning, and it turned out to be a good decision. Around 10:00 am, the fog dissipated and we found ourselves looking down at clouds and up at beautiful blue skies. The photos don’t even come close to capturing the awe of that morning. It turned out the bad weather the day before was a blessing because the cable car was not working and no Chinese tourists were able to come up. We ended up with the entire top of the mountain to ourselves. That afternoon, the cable cars began working again and we rode them down to the buses. After Mount Tai, we went to Larry’s home village (Larry was one of our guides). The small town had set up a huge celebration for us, and we were placed at tables in the center of about 400 Chinese villagers in front of a stage. For the rest of the day, we watched the local townspeople perform on stage, and we even got a chance to go on stage and sing a few songs. The warmth from that small town was perhaps the most incredible part of the whole trip.

Friday, July 10, 2009
We spent the night a very nice hotel and spa, then the next morning went to Pu Songling’s Liquan Spring where we saw his gravesite and visited a haunted house. Pu Songling was a famous Chinese writer, sort of like a Chinese Hemmingway. The haunted house was similar to most haunted houses in the States, with very fake looking stuff inside, but this house was a bit more graphic than ones I have been to before (for example, a naked man clenching to a glowing hot steel column as torture for his sins). That afternoon we headed to the airport where we found that our flight was delayed several hours. We finally left around 7:30 pm and arrived back in Harbin around 9:00 pm.

All in all, the week was a great experience and a nice break from classes. There were definitely some flaws in planning, and it seemed like we spent way too much of our time on a bus or a train or waiting, but I think the good outweighed the bad. Going to Mount Tai and Larry’s village alone were two amazing experiences I would probably never have the opportunity to do on my own. I posted a bunch of photos from the trip in 4 separate albums, so check them out it you’d like on my photos page or on my flickr account. Now I’m looking forward to only 4 weeks left here in Harbin. I can’t believe how quickly this program is going by, but it’s been awesome so far.

Friday night we all met in the lobby downstairs then took a bus to the train station. We boarded the train around 9:00 pm, and then Max and I promptly began writing songs in Chinese with the help of Jay’s guitar. Within 5 minutes we had a tune down and performed it, which resulted in a rather continuous flow of singing every song anyone knew until the wee hours of the morning. The train was a blast, although I think we definitely annoyed some people trying to get some sleep.

We arriving early in the morning in a city called 海拉尔 (hailaer) and were immediately welcomed by our tour company, “Flying Tourism Co. Ltd China, Harbin” (飞场旅游) who gave us yellow tourism hats with the company logo on it and a white silk-like scarf. We then went to a buffet style breakfast restaurant that had traditional food from the area. Most memorable for me was the milk tea that sort of had a flavor of butter, milk, and very light coffee. After breakfast, we went to 海拉尔战争纪念园 (Hailaer War Memorial). The building is an old Japanese Base that has been converted into a museum, and inside was some very disturbing facts about what the Japanese did to the Chinese. Oddly enough, there was a shooting range at the end (which some students tried out) and a blue screen where you could stand and look like you were flying over the city (a little out of place for a war memorial if you ask me, but eh, it was fun).

After the war memorial we went to a Mongolian tourist facility that is run by local Mongolians and set up as a traditional Mongolian festival house. There was one main tent and several smaller surrounding ones. When we arrived, we were greeted by the Mongolians and each took a celebratory shot of 白酒 (bai jiu). After the ceremony, we went to the back of the facility where the animals were kept and rode horses (well, not by ourselves, but it was still cool to get to ride one even with a guy in front guiding). Several of us, including me, rode the camel ride for 30 kuai (about $4.20, and totally worth it – definitely the highlight of the day). You don’t realize how high those animals stand until you get on one, and they make the strangest noise I’ve ever heard an animal make (kind of like those things from Star Wars that Luke kills and crawls inside to survive in the cold). During lunch, we ate traditional Mongolian food, which included among other things some incredibly delicious lamb. They bring it to you as just a plate of lamb chunks then you grab a piece and cut off what you want with a knife. During lunch, the Mongolians had a small show where they sung songs and played the “Morin khuur” (sort of a Mongolian cello with a horse head carved in the nut at the top). In Chinese it is known as the matouqin (马头琴). They say that when it is played, the horses outside cry.

After lunch, we got back on the bus to head on to Inner Mongolia. We took a pit stop for a group photo, and after the photo a few people started running towards the hill in the distance (I still don’t know what sparked this). Eventually everyone joined in and we ended up running a least a mile out into the field. From there all you could see for miles was a beautiful rolling prairie. I took a bunch of photos in an attempt to capture the exact photo from the Microsoft desktop screen.

We then rode the bus for about an hour until we came upon a traditional Mongolian home on the side of the road. We all got out and started chatting with the family that lived there. Surprisingly, their Mandarin was incredibly clear and we could understand most of what they said. I went inside one of the 3 tents and found several more students chatting with an older woman. She said she was 60 and had 4 daughters that lived in the city. She was a lovely lady and welcomed us to have some milk tea and crackers that were sort of like a dried cheese. Outside they had a small wind turbine and inside under the TV was a bunch of car batteries and parts of a CPU that converted and stored the electricity. I was pretty impressed to see such a rather advanced set up functioning in such a poor environment.

We rode on for about another hour and a half until we arrived in 内蒙古 (Inner Mongolia) and went to our hotel. Everyone was pretty beat, and I ended up playing cards then going to bed. The next morning we rode out to 呼伦湖 (Hu Lun Lake) which turned out to be a huge dried up area with 4-Wheelers and a Dune Buggy, so we drove them around and got covered in mud for the morning. After the morning fun, we headed to the final destination of our trip – the Russian border. When we first arrived, we were told we would have 15 minutes to walk around and take photos from about 300 yards out, then would have to leave. After about 20 minutes of walking around, we were finally allowed to get closer and actually go inside the Chinese-side main building. Afterwards we went down the rode to a huge courtyard that was filled with human-size Babushkas all around one gigantic Babushka in the middle. The Babushkas were all painted with different people and places (mostly famous Americans). After about 30 minutes of hanging out there, we got back on the buses and headed for the hotel. We grabbed some quick dinner then went to the train station for our long ride back to Harbin. It was about a 12 hour ride through the night, and then we had the morning to sleep and prepare for afternoon classes. It was an event-packed weekend, but one heck of a good time.