Yunnan!

It's been a few days since we've been back from Yunnan and I've enjoyed relaxing in Hangzhou. The weather's been great and it is going to get warmer in the next week or so!

So for the next few posts, I will be sharing with you our wonderful week in China's frontier land. Did you know Yunnan wasn't even a province during WWII? So it's as far away as you can get from China. It feels pretty wild there actually. There are many ethnic minorities who still call this province home and people from Vietnam and Thailand trace their ancestors to this region.

Chase and I had a great time. Quick summary: a couple of days in Kunming with unsuccessful attempts to find rock climbing, I got a stomach bug, went to LiJiang, and had a couple of attempts to go to the Tiger Leaping Gorge and finally made it there for a two day trek, almost adopted another puppy, a day in Dali (China's Goa, if you know what I mean), and back to Hangzhou.

Oh and I've got pics of it all! Love the new camera...

Slight Oversight

I thought I would be able to take our new camera on this trip, take pics and download them on to the blog for your viewing pleasure. However, I forgot that we are still in good 'ole China. The Great Firewall will block me from accessing my blog since I will be laptop-less.

So I guess I'm signing off for a week or so and when I return to Hangzhou I will have a splendid recount of what we did, who we saw, what we ate, and all the juicy details.

Stay Tuned.

And until then "Chun Jie Kuai Le!" and "Gong Xi Nin!"

(That was Happy Spring Festival and Happy New Year!)

Change of Plans

Chase called me at work on Friday, (well several times) and finally when we talked he told me that Yangshuo was going to be cold and rainy the entire time we planned to be there. So that would mean no hiking, climbing, and spending time outdoors in the sunshine and enjoying fresh mountain air, etc. So we decided to change our plans last minute and have chosen to go to Kunming, which is the capital of Yunnan province.

It's a city of about 8 million people on the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau. So that means the elevation is around 6,000 feet. It's the high-altitude training center for most athletes in China and many from around the world. And therefore, it has plenty of sunshine and because of it being so far south enjoys a tropical climate. Basically, it's very lush. It's the city from where you can take side-trips to see China's ethnic minorities up close. Hopefully we won't get sucked into some tour or destination where it's a Chinese ethnic minorities "themepark" but we hope to get off the beaten path and see the diversity in culture.

In southwestern Yunnan, there's a lot of Burmese influence since it shares a large border. This is evident in food as well. There are lots of places down there where you can get a glimpse of the different kinds of peoples.

In northwestern Yunnan lies Dali, Lijiang, Tiger Leaping Gorge, and the "Shangri-la" of China. All of these are supposed to be beautiful cities and the gorge of course is the deepest one in the world. So we are going that route and will worry about booking train tickets to Dali and Lijiang once we get to Kunming on Sunday. Hopefully it's not sold out and mayhem at the train ticket office because everyone's trying to get home for the holiday.

We also chose to go to Kunming because there's supposed to be some climbing outside of the city and Chase is definitely excited about that.

Finally, I am excited because Yunnan cuisine is fresh, earthy, and they use a lot of various kinds of mushrooms in their diets. You haven't eaten mushrooms unless you have come to China to taste their cuisine. It's amazing how many different kinds of fungi and mushroom grow here and the different preparations of them. In fact, Chase and I were at an early dinner tonight and I had wood ear mushrooms. YUM.

Yunnan cuisine also includes a fair amount of bamboo, pineapple, and banana, which I love to eat as well.

So I hope to take some pics with our lovely new camera and post them.... speaking of.... we went to the electronics market today to crack my Iphone to use in China, bought a case for my phone, a case for our new camera, and 8 DVDs, and the total cost - $25 USD. That's all. In America, you can't even buy the case for the Iphone for less than $20.

Then our dinner: 2 cold appetizers, 1 vegetarian entree, 2 meat entrees for Chase with a coupon for $10 brought our meal to $10. That was 50% off our meal.

Man, I love China right now.

Quick Update

It's a lovely Friday morning. I'm enjoying a whole pot of chai. I've started to increase my caffeine intake because the weather has been so poor in Hangzhou. I just don't have energy to wake up when it's day after day of no sun, gloom, and constant drizzle.

But the tea's excellent, had a bowl of granola, and listening to my current favorite song: A-Punk by Vampire Weekend. It's a happy tune and it gets me going.

Today's the last day of the term for the children at my school. Thank GOD. I made it. Hahah.

We have two weeks off for Chinese New Year, sometimes called Spring Festival. Chase and I are going on our first domestic trip of more than 3 days. Can you believe that? All of our other trips have been international, so far?

Crazy. I thought we came here to see China.

There have been fireworks going off for weeks. You just have to experience the excitement in the air. It's hard to explain. Everyone in the country travels home so I hope our decision to stay in the country was a good one.

We are going to Yangshuo, a climbing destination. It's known for it's tall towering peaks... yes the ones you have seen in landscape art and scrolls.

Oh, and the other day I cooked my first full-course Indian meal, desert included. I made dhal, rasam, cauliflower, and paysam. It turned out all right... except for the rasam, which I just can't make just like my Mom's. I guess that's how it goes though. Mom's cooking will always be the best.

Alright, I'm late for work now and have been every day this week. Yikes!

Bye.

Reason to Celebrate

Chase and I went to Shanghai for a day trip yesterday partly because it was my birthday this week and I love Shanghai. I also had a dentist appointment. There are no western style dentists in Hangzhou that would meet my requirements for education/training, cleanliness, etc. So the report is pretty good. I've got clean teeth now. But unfortunately, in the future, I'm going to need a root canal. I've got a cavity that was filled a long time ago but it is so close to the nerve that it's inevitable. So I must wait and when I start to feel pain there again, I should come in.

After the dentist I went to a yoga class. It was really great. I worked hard, enjoyed the instruction, learned a few things, and got a couple of great adjustments and instructions. So it's nice to know that there is good yoga out there in Shanghai if I need it. I also found out that an Anusara (not Inspired, but on the way there I think) is moving to Hangzhou, so I will be going out to Binjiang district every so often to take his classes once he gets here in February.

Chase and I went to the urban planning museum of Shanghai in the afternoon and we saw some great models of what the Shanghai Expo site is going to look like. It's a whole side of the city! And Shanghai is enormous! It reminds me so much of Manhattan and life there is just like New York life. So if you are ever interested in visiting us, I'm sure a trip to Shanghai is in order.

Then in the evening we went with a little trepidation to try a new interior Mexican restaurant that was recommended in the expat magazines of Shanghai, MAYA. It blew us away! Real mexican flavors, fresh cheese, jalapenos, and ingredients. The queso fundida was a little bland we think that the cheese they were using is just a little bit milder than what we are used to in order to fit the Chinese and international palette. The tortillas were freshly made and the margaritas weren't that bad! So we will be going back but we noticed on the way out that in the reader's choice awards for the expat magazine, that this restaurant was 1st runner up. So perhaps we'll try the winner next time we are in Shanghai.

Another reason for celebration last night was that we sold Chase's truck and got our house in Austin rented earlier this week! The new tenant will be moving in on Monday. So we certainly feel that we have cut a few more strings from our life in the US and are truly living the expat life. The only connection we still have is our baby, Lola and there's no way we would ever bring her here so we are glad she's happy and healthy with my family back in Austin.

Lazy Saturdays

Last night Chase and I went to bed at 10pm and didn't wake up or really stir until 9am this morning. A whole 11 hours of sleep! What a lovely thing that was. My weekdays are so jam-packed that it's inevitable that I'm sleep deprived by Friday so it's really lovely to just have nothing to do on Friday night. We ordered Papa John's and watched Up in the Air with George Clooney. I fell asleep through bits but it was an amusing story. It's on youku.com for any of you out there willing to watch it for free. It's a Chinese site but don't get too scared by all the characters. Just type in the movie you want to see and voila!

This morning I made breakfast and talked with my sister on Skype. Then I sat down at had two whole pots of tea and scoured the new City Shop site because you can select groceries from there instead of using their catalog and emailing in your order. If you don't know what I'm talking about, City Shop is the grocery store from Shanghai that we order our groceries from each week. And it gets delivered to our doorstep. This is because there is very little choice in the way of cheeses, dairy, and western products in Hangzhou. I have found a good grocery store that I go to for organic produce, but City Shop has everything else.

When I was done with that, I showered and Chase and I went out looking for my birthday present. What we expected to find was a bike at the bike store so that I can ride around the hills in the area and around the lake and along the canals with Chase, but instead we ended up with a scrapper. When we got there the store was closed and we were looking around and along came a little scrapper dog. She began to eat some bones from a chicken wing that someone left on the ground and as we started to walk away from the bike store, she stopped eating and followed us. Well, more like she really followed Chase. I mean, she loved him. He stopped, she stopped. He went, she went. He whistled, she came running along. She followed us and we thought she would eventually stop as she started to look thirsty. But she walked beautifully off leash, crossed the crosswalks, and kept at our heals. That was until finally, we came across a couple who had a long-haired chihuahua. She became distracted and figured they were more exciting than we were. So just a few blocks before our house, a few blocks from being a part of our family, living life on the 14th floor of Lan Ting Guo Ji, she gave up to perhaps join a family that already had a dog and would care for her.

To be honest, it was a relief. I wasn't ready to have her in my life yet and Chase and I both came to the conclusion that as cruel as this may sound, we would like to choose the pup that we might eventually have. It seemed like a burden to get a dog when we weren't prepared. We discussed that we didn't even have food for her when we eventually would get home. We also could see that she had just had pups and have an un-neutered dog would be messy about every month, and what would we do about that? Maybe she knew that and didn't want to risk the long journey. Who knows. We hope that the old couple that she followed away from us were dog lovers (they did already have one, didn't they?) and would feed her a meal this evening and maybe even take her in forever.

The Joys of Hiking

Last weekend, Chase and I ventured up Baochu Hill where there is an old pagoda. Of course it has been reconstructed only 50 years ago. Not much of what you see in China is ever the original because there has just been so much destruction and not enough reverence for the past. Anyways, the original was built over 600 years ago and it's still a symbol of Hangzhou.

We've been hiking before in Hangzhou and this time it was apparent to us that the guidelines that we normally follow when using trails in America do not exist here in China. I shall list a few:

1. Giving way to people climbing uphill. Chinese people just move at their own pace, stand in the middle of the trail and have conversations with no consideration for others. Chase and I repeatedly brushed by people who made no apologies or didn't move over as they saw us coming. And we would always have to move around them or make way for them. They are so used to not having personal space that it doesn't phase them.

2. The addiction to their phones. The purpose of getting out into nature is to get away from city sounds and enjoy fresh air. However, the number of people staring into their phones, texting while they hike was absurd. If they weren't on their phones, they were using their phones as boomboxes to blast their favorite tunes totally drowning out the few birds that were in the trees. Sorry, I just don't want to be forced to listen to someone else's music while I'm trying to get away from people. I just don't understand why they can't give up technology and media even for a few minutes a day. The addiction to video games is also growing in this country of recent economic surge. The other night, we went to dinner with friends and a full grown man with his wife and several other couples had brought along his laptop and while the meal was going on, he was engaged in computer games. Absurd!

3. A funny thing happens when people reach the top of the hill or a vantage point on one of the trails. They begin to yell. And I mean George of the Jungle style. Young Chinese men like to yell and yodel as if they have conquered a large mountain and want everyone below to know it. It's almost as if they have never had the opportunity to show their might and the trek up the hill has been a personal test. They might be just a few hundred feet up. All I could do every time I heard this was bawk and shake my head.

There are many things about the Chinese culture that annoy me after being 18 months into this adventure. And Chase and I have become less tolerant and patient with understanding their culture. This is the opposite, complete opposite of what I expected to happen. I thought I was an open-minded person and accepting of all people around the world. I suppose this is the case as an outsider just observing, but when you have to live with their customs day in day out, it's a totally different perspective.

We did come across some really nice experiences on our hike as well. For example, there was a man who stood out in a field and belted out some beautiful Chinese opera for passersby. He was really great. We also met a cute dog that didn't even come when I called it because the sounds and tone of voice that I use as a Westerner weren't recognizable to the dog. When a Chinese person called it, the dog came wagging its tail. Interesting. We also got to walk through an old village where people still don't have hot water and barely have electricity and cooking is done by fire. This all in the middle of a large metropolis, bigger than Houston. The disparity of life is so great just a few miles from where I live.

I do want to say that we do enjoy our lives in China. It's just that we have to deal with daily reminders of how we are so different. I thought that coming to China and experiencing a different culture would make me more tolerant and patient. It has done the opposite. I am more frustrated and annoyed with our differences, especially when it comes to hygiene, personal courtesy, and care for the Earth. Chase and I have a saying when there's nothing we can do about the situation we are in so that we can keep perspective: "It's China."