The Rooftop of the World

Well, here I am on the eve of my departure. I can’t believe my time in China is up. It feels like just yesterday I stepped off the plane thinking “what have I gotten myself into?” Turns out I made a pretty good decision. I shall save reflection for some later date though. Right now my purpose of writing is to record for posterity’s sake, the trials and tribulations of my recent trip to Tibet. Also known more specifically as the Tibetan autonomous region- China’s most disputed territory and the rooftop of the world. It was one heck of a trip, so prepare yourself for a monstrous entry. I won’t be hurt if you don’t make it all the way through.

And so our story begins, at 4 in the morning, at my most favorite place in all of China- the Zhengzhou train station. Myself, and two other foreign teachers, Jennie and Rani, wearily stumbled onto the train and attempted to bed down for the quick 38 hour train ride. Being cheap, we purchased hard sleepers, meaning that we had to share our car with 3 other people besides the three of us. Luckily we were able to get tickets for the two bottom-most beds and only one middle bed. This meant that we had a place to sit up during the day, as the second and third beds are stacked too close together to allow for an upright position. The people in those beds had to spend the entire trip lying down, or sitting in one of the few small seats in the hallway. Luckily, both ways, our cabin mates were nice and quiet, with one small exception. When we first boarded the train in Zhengzhou one of our fellow passengers whom we affectionately referred to as ‘Lao Lao’  (grandma- though not to her face) had some serious difficulty locating a place for her luggage and felt the need to communicate this by yelling through the closed double paned glass window to her daughter outside the train. This mode of communication didn’t appear to work so they switched to cell phones, yet strangely (or not so strangely if you live in China) the woman’s volume did not change despite the fact that she was actually speaking on the phone. Soon though Lao Lao figured it out, then monkeyed herself up to the highest bunk where we didn’t hear from her again until many hours later when she re-emerged and offered us creepy Chinese treats and fenangled herself a spot on Rani’s bed. She even managed to commandeer her blanket, that manx. It was all good though, by then Lao Lao was back on our good side. Also, it was amusing to watch her nap (don’t judge, you try spending almost 40 hours on a train and see what you come up with for entertainment). The train ride was uneventful except for the fact that my ipod (fully loaded with dozens of new podcasts ready for the listening) ceased to function within the first few hours of the trip and never came on again until hour 32 on the return trip, which was really quite useful. 

Finally, we reached Lhasa, where we staggered off the train 2 hours EARLIER than anticipated (this is a downright miracle in China), and were greeted by our tour guide Ba Tse. To enter Tibet as a foreigner you must have a permit, and to get a permit you must have a tour guide: enter Ba Tse. We had heard from a few people that it is possible to enter Tibet illegally (without the permit) and had considered doing this. But I can tell you with authority that I highly doubt that is actually possible. They checked our permit everywhere: on the train, upon exiting the train station, upon checking in to any hostel, upon entering many sites in Lhasa, and at dozens of roadside checks. I say, shell out the dough, get the permit. Anyway back to Ba Tse. Upon seeing him, and before realizing he was holding a sign with our names on it, Rani, Jennie and I all seem to have had a similar thought run through our heads that went a lot like this: “who is this fool?” Ba Tse is, perhaps, the most gangsta’ Tibetan Buddhist in existence. His wardrobe appeared to consist entirely of: velour LA Laker’s shorts or sweatpants, oversized T-shirts, huge high top Nikes, a NY Nicks hat and a pair of giant aviator sunglasses that rarely left his face. And one can’t forget his Luis Vuitton bag (what I think was actually a woman’s purse) that he wore as a satchel. Oh Be Tse- it’s no secret that he has a serious love affair with America. Unfortunately, Tibetans are not allowed passports by the Chinese government so his chances of ever making it to the good ol’ US are slim to none, unless there’s a drastic change in the political climate sometime in the near future. Anyway, Ba Tse is proof that first impressions are often wrong, as he turned out to be extremely helpful and friendly, fluent in Mandarin, Tibetan, English and soon French, a talented musician, and generally an upstanding guy. Well, with the exception of the time he punched our driver in the face and attempted to gouge out his eye while driving…but that’s a different story.

On our first full day in Tibet we visited the Sera Monastery. This is one of Lhasa’s largest monasteries and our first real glimpse of Tibet. And it was awesome! We wondered through the first room as Ba Tse tried to explain to us all that we were seeing (and I am ashamed to admit that I mostly forgot-Tibetan Buddhism is a complicated religion and difficult to learn when one is being thoroughly overwhelmed with hundreds of new sites, sounds and smells)! We eventually found ourselves as the only foreigners in a huge line of Tibetans, nearly all of them dressed elaborately in their traditional dress, hair braded and tied up with colorful ribbons around their heads, and all of them, men and women, covered in torquoise and red coral jewelry. Slowly we shuffled through a series of hallways until we found ourselves in a room thick with incense and the smell of burning yak butter, surrounded by Tibetans chanting and pouring their yak butter offerings into the candles laid at the base of the statue of the Wrathful Buddha. We waited our turn in line, and finally were able to hand our prayer scarves with money wrapped inside to a monk, who took them from us and then laid a hand on our heads and said a blessing over us. He then directed us to stick our heads into a hole, where we then said a prayer asking for safety from the Wrathful Buddha. It was a great way to be introduced to Tibet, to be allowed into such a sacred place, surrounded by hundreds of devout worshippers and to experience it all alongside them. We spent the rest of the day exploring Lhasa on our own (we gave Ba Tse the afternoon off) and I came to realize that the city feels like an incredibly holy place. It is the holiest city in all of Tibet, and so it is full of pilgrims who come from all over Tibet to see the most important sites of Tibetan Buddhism. Everywhere you go the streets are full of monks and nuns, and colorfully and elaborately dressed pilgrims spinning prayer wheels as they walk. Everyone is always fingering their prayer beads and chanting quietly under their breath, even while sitting on a park bench or walking down the street or waiting for the bus. The devotion of the Tibetan people is remarkable. Of course, because China is fully of strange dichotomies, everywhere we went, among all the peaceful Buddhist pilgrims and monks, there were also tons and tons of Chinese militia. On every street corner, in every major square or marketplace, there were loads of heavily armed (with huge rifles and bullet proof vests and riot shields) Chinese troops, keeping the "peace". It was rather alarming at first, as the military presence is nowhere near that intense anywhere else I've been in China, but like anything else I got used to it.

On our second day we visited the Potala Palace, which was the home of the Dalai Lama until the 14^th (and recent) Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959. In case you don’t know, the Dalai Lama is the traditional spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people, though he is currently denounced by the Chinese government and no longer allowed inside Tibet. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual center of Tibetan Buddhism, more or less akin to the pope, and is considered a physical manifestation of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara who has been reborn to Earth to enlighten others. His palace is giant and beautiful, and apparently has over 2,000 rooms, though we were only allowed to see about a dozen of them. My favorite part of the Palace were the funeral Stupas of the past Dalai Lamas. We also walked around in the park across from the Potala, where the Chinese government has most tastefully erected a large monument in celebration of the People’s Party directly across from the palace. Despite this, numerous pilgrims still were gathered prostrating themselves and praying before the now empty Palace of their leader. I know prostrations sounds like something dirty, but what it is actually is a method of prayer in which people get down on all fours, and then spread their hands out in front of them and lie down flat on the ground, touching their forehead flat to the ground each time. All around Tibet we saw people praying in this way. The most remarkable were the pilgrims we saw along the highway and from the train, who prostrate themselves for miles and miles as they make their way between the holy sites of Tibet and into Lhasa. They take one step, then get down on all fours, then lie flat on their stomachs and touch their heads to the ground, then they stand up, take one step, and do it again. Their hands and foreheads and noses are scuffed raw and bleeding after days and days of their pilgrimage. Our guide told us they bring nothing with them but a small bottle of water, they rely only the kindness of strangers for food, and many of them die along the way. All in the name of devotion, to pray before a palace in which the most important inhabitant is no longer present. Of course, pilgrims come to Lhasa for more than just the Potala, they also come to see the Jokhang Temple. The Jokhang is the most important temple in Tibetan Buddhism. Our guide told us that the Tibetan people believe that Tibet is an ogre, and the Jokhang is the ogre’s heart. In the Jokhang is Tibetan Buddhism’s most important statue, which is usually obscured by a thick iron curtain. However, for whatever reason on the day we visited we were allowed behind the curtain and into the room where the Buddha is kept, which we were told is extremely unusual. On that day the statue was being repainted by a monk with a thin sheet of real gold…which was given to the temple in the will of a recently passed Tibetan. Rani was even allowed to take one picture of the statue, which was strictly prohibited. We had some good luck that day.

On our fifth day in Tibet we loaded up into the car and headed out to Namtso Lake, one of the three holy lakes in Tibet. It took us about 5 hours to get there, and along the way we passed incredible scenery, huge open planes dotted with yaks and goats and nomadic herdsmen and their small tents made of yak skin. The lake was incredibly beautiful, I won’t waste a ton of time here describing it, for a picture will do a much better job than I can, and even that can’t really capture the amazing blueness of the water. The small settlement that we stayed at was not quite as picturesque as the lake. It was full of mangy half wild dogs that we viewed with a leery eye, as Jennie took the liberty of informing us that the number one infectious disease in Tibet is rabies. Our “hotel” for the night was a tin storage shed that had a lovely gravel floor and plenty of cracks to let in the chilly night air. Namtso lake is located at 4,718 m above sea level, and it snowed overnight while we were there, in mid-June, and that’s completely normal. It made for a cold night. The real adventure began though, when Jennie and I attempted to locate the “toilet”. The owner of hotel laughingly led us to the bathroom, which turned out to be nothing more than a raised shack with a hole cut in the floor that we could smell from meters away. If you’ve ever seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire there’s a scene in that movie involving a very similar toilet- so you can imagine. He saw Jennie and I eyeing it dubiously, so he, with even greater amusement, led us to what we affectionately dubbed “Shit Hill” which was exactly that. A small hill located on the edge of the settlement where everyone goes to…well you get the idea. Jennie and I decided this was the better option, at least there was a breeze (a cold, cold breeze). I don’t think you’ve really lived until you’ve squatted behind a tiny hill right out in the open at an unbelievably beautiful sacred lake. Of course while we were out there a nomad man joined us on Shit Hill, but he just went about his business and paid us no mind. Later, after discovering the nomad take on bathroom usage (which apparently is going anywhere you feel like it) we found a spot more to our liking (fewer rabid dogs to wade through) behind a truck near our hotel. All three of us found this to be a pleasant spot to empty our bladders in the morning, and even had the company of a lovely sacred yak (the white yaks are sacred and NOT for eating) who was munching a tasty tuft off grass nearby, likely irrigated by such intrepid pee-ers as ourselves.

We then returned to Lhasa, spent a day recovering and visiting a remarkable coffee shop that had the best baked goods I’ve had thus far in China, and the best Tiramisu I’ve EVER eaten. Let me take a moment here to comment on the food in Tibet. Which was awesome, and mostly involved yak. Yak butter tea (which was actually not very awesome-it tasted like a stick of butter melted in a glass), yak yogurt, yak cheese, momos (which are kind of like dumplings) filled with of course, yak or cheese or apples or vegetables. I even ate quite a bit of yak meat, which was basically the only meat available in Tibet, and was rather tasty. Yum…we ate a lot of food while in Tibet, and it was great!

Then, for our final adventure, we loaded back into the car and started on the 5 hour car ride to Shigatse, the highest city in the world. Our driver and Ba Tse picked up us that morning as anticipated, and Jennie, Rani and I were chatting it up in the back not paying any attention to the two guys in the front seat who appeared to be just having a conversation in Tibetan. Then suddenly Ba Tsa started wailing on the driver. Much shouting ensued, the fists were put away, and we made a nice little detour to the travel agency where we were told to sit tight and not worry. In the end we were told that Ba Tse was angry with the driver because earlier that morning, before they picked us up, Ba Tse had seen the driver hit an old woman with his car and apparently the driver did not stop or do anything about it. This peeved off Ba Tse nicely, and an argument and then fisticuffs followed, and finally ended up with us getting a new driver and continuing on our merry way. No harm no foul. Well, except to the driver…who appeared to have had better days. It took us about 5 hours to get to Shigatse, which is a rather unremarkable town, sadly extremely Chinese feeling, and very dirty. The next day we headed out to our real destination…Mt. Everest!!!!! That’s right, after another punishing 9 hours in the car, most of which was spent on incredibly switchbacky gravel roads that climbed to absolutely ridiculous heights we finally rounded the bend and suddently there we were, Everest base camp, located right at the base of the tallest mountain in the world! We arrived at base camp at about 5 in the evening, but thanks to the ridiculous fact that all of China is in one time zone, this still meant that we had a solid 5-5.5 hours of daylight left (and that’s not an exaggeration). We filled those hours taking roughly 8 zillion pictures of mount Everest and in general freezing our collective asses off. Then we retired to our “hotel” (this term again used quite loosely) which was actually a big tent. The tent was also really more of a restaurant, but the bench seats doubled as our beds. This place was actually much nicer than the one in Namtso, there was a yak dung stove in the middle that kept it much warmer than our tin shed. The woman who ran the place was very nice and had the world’s most adorable little baby who loved to get into everything she possibly could and then dump it all over the floor, much to the chagrin of her mother, who from the moment we arrived to the moment we went to bed never stopped working for an instant. She was always tending the stove or pouring us tea or cooking us dinner or sweeping up dust on the carpet that had been laid over the gravel with her stick broom. When we arrived to base camp it was a bit cloudy, but later on the clouds cleared away and we had an incredible view of the night sky. I can’t imagine a better place to see the stars than from the top of the world.

That’s basically the end of the trip. The next morning we woke up, stopped by the RongPhu Monastery, which is the highest monastery in the world. It was pretty cool, because we were got there early we had the place to ourselves, and the monks and nuns that live there opened up all of the rooms and even let us take pictures inside, which is quite unusual. Then we headed back to Lhasa, did lots and lots of shopping, joined the pilgrims on their circuit around the Jokhang Temple, ate more delicious food (oh, how I miss the yak yogurt and momos and bobis and barley wine already!) spent a solid 42 more hours on the train, and then finally arrived for the last time at the Zhengzhou train station, where I paid my last respects to that dirty, skanky institution that has allowed me to see so much of this country. There are of course many other little details and sites that I didn’t include, but there is just so much to tell about that I don't think I could ever capture it all here. Besides that, I’m tired of writing and I need to go to bed. In just over 12 short hours I will to begin my 24 hour trek back to Mei Guo, and I still have packing to do! I’m sad that my time here is over, but I can’t imagine a better way to have ended it than my trip to one of the most incredible places I have ever been.

So that’s it. This is me signing out…to all of you back home, I’ll catch you on the flip side of this wide and amazing Earth.

School's out for the summer...

Well at least it is for me. Friday was my last day of class! It was actually a fairly sad last week. It was hard to say goodbye to all of my students and explain that it's not only my last day for the term, but that I also won't be returning next year. This news was followed by numerous "noooo"'s and a chorus of "but why teacher?" I have really grown to love many of my students and it is sad to leave, knowing I more than likely won't see them ever again. I gave all my students my email address, so hopefully at least one of the hundreds of students I have manages to actually keep in touch. We'll see.

Now that my work here is officially over, I feel like I should have some deep introspective post about all I've learned in China and how these past ten months have changed me. Maybe it's just because it's so hot, hot, HOT outside, or because I've been running around all day...but I got nothing. I think it's more likely that I won't really understand or fully appreciate this experience all at once, but rather it will be something that will come gradually over time. One thing I know for certain though, is that this experience has taught me that I am capable of much more than I realized. I have managed to make my way, navigate, feed and cloth myself, live, have fun, and thrive in a country that really is much different than my own, and do it all despite the fact that I unable to communicate with almost anyone I meet. I remember when I first arrived, the hour and a half bus ride across the city (including bus changes) that I had to take each day seemed almost overwhelmingly impossible. How would I know which stop to change the bus at (the stops are obviously labeled only in Chinese)? How would I know where to get off? How would I remember the way from the bus stop to campus? Now, as I remember I feel silly I was ever so intimidated. Nowadays I often use the bus ride as an opportunity for a nap. I had very seriously considered joining the Peace Corps after graduating, but managed to talk myself out of it- mostly because I just didn't think I'd be able to handle it. While I'm sure a Peace Corp position would have been much more challenging than this, I am pretty sure that I could have done it, and I really regret chickening out. Oh well, there's still time for that:)

I suppose even if that's all I've learned, it's something. Surely if I can navigate my way through a Chinese super market I can handle whatever else it is life has to throw at me. So there you go, I managed a little introspection after all. Maybe a bit cheesy...but you can blame the heat for that.

Anyway, that's about all the time I have for this silly business. At three a.m. I am boarding a train with two of the other foreign teachers, and we are heading to Tibet! I am super excited! I think it's going to be an amazing trip...if we can survive the 38 hour train ride to get there. The train I will be taking is the highest train in the world, and goes up to nearly 17,000 ft at its highest point. Which is high my friends. So high, in fact, that they have oxygen on the train. Awesome. I'll be in Tibet for about two weeks, and we have an amazing trip planned including a trip to Nam-Tso Lake and a night at Everest base camp in nomad yak tents! I'm very excited. I better get back to packing!

The Shaolin Temple and Guoliangcun

Look at me, updating like crazy! 

So, last weekend I got Monday off for the May Day holiday. Quite conveniently my students had their mid-term exams the following Tuesday and Wednesday, resulting in an awesome 5-day weekend for me! On Saturday I went to the Shaolin Temple with Louise, who is a friend that volunteers teaching English at a school just a few minutes walk from my school. She is leaving back to Sweden in just a couple of weeks, so we decided it would be a good time to check out the birthplace of Kung Fu, especially considering it is only a few hours outside of Zhengzhou, and really on of the only major tourist attractions in the whole province. It was a pretty fun trip, but ended up being a little more of an adventure to get there than I’d anticipated. We showed up at the long distance bus station amid a swarm of other people trying to make it to the temple. Perhaps the holiday weekend was not the best time to choose to visit. It took a lot of gesturing and pointing at our tickets and following, oh, so helpful, bus station attendants back and forth and back and forth before we finally found the bus we needed to take. For some unknown reason, the bus ended up being a sleeper bus (naturally one needs a bed for the 1.5-2 hour trip). I actually was not a huge fan of the sleeper bus, mostly because I was not into the idea of walking around without my shoes on (they made us take them off before getting on the bus) and hanging out in narrow beds that looked as if the blankets hadn’t been washed in ages. I’m not a very big germaphobe, but I do draw the line somewhere. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the bus better had our seats not been in such close proximity to the bathroom, the stink of which penetrated the entire bus but was especially strong near our seats. It was here I made the most terrible decision of my life, and I actually went into the bathroom. It least I had the sense to refuse to use the lovely pair of teddy bear slippers placed outside the door. The slippers that were used by every person who felt the need to use the restroom but didn’t want to do so in their stocking feet. I wore my shoes, bus attendant be damned. Anyway, I will spare you any more details of the bathroom, but I am not exaggerating in saying that it was the worst bathroom I’ve been in so far in China. And that’s saying something, considering most of the public restrooms are nothing but stall-less troughs in the floor (yes I have used these, yes the bathroom on the bus was worse…so much worse).

The Shaolin Temple itself was okay, it looked like any other temple, but I did see a high number of monks (and I really dig monks for some reason). Plus, Kung Fu fighting monks are pretty bad ass. We ended up spending a long time there, and I’m not quite sure how, considering we even missed one of the Kung Fu shows (which I am a little sad about). When we finally left, we had a bit of a difficulty trying to figure out how to catch a bus back down to Zhengzhou. The bus we’d taken up there had just dropped us off at the gate and then disappeared hours earlier. So, being tired and ready to head home, we just ended up hailing a Tuk Tuk (motorbike taxi) to take us down. It was the first taxi we saw, and probably one of the worst ways possible to get down the mountain. For some reason the driver refused to drive on the shoulder, and instead drove in the lane with traffic, despite the fact we were going roughly half the speed of everyone else. People kept honking and veering around us, and I was halfway certain it would be the death of us all. But luckily, it was not. When we got into Dengfeng, the city nearest the temple, we were able to catch a bus back to Zhengzhou, and I made the horrible mistake of using the bathroom again. There were only a handful of people on the bus, so I figured- how bad can it be? Idiot, obviously they don’t clean that thing- ever. I can’t even talk any more about it, but let me just say, I’ve never been the God-fearing kind, but that bathroom truly made me fear for my soul. If I were ever to go to hell it most certainly would take the form of the bathroom on the long-distance bus between Zhengzhou and the Shaolin temple.

Then, on Monday, after I’d had a day off to burn my shoes and scour every article of clothing or inch of skin that went inside that bathroom, Fallon and I headed off on another adventure. I had read about a cool cliff-top village in northern Henan near the border of the Shanxi province, so Fallon and I decided to visit. Getting there was a bit of a trick, it required us to take a train to Xinxiang (a nasty city which we both decided is the true arm-pit of China, a designation that we had previously awarded Zhengzhou). For some reason the air in this city has a very noticeable chemical smell. In Zhengzhou the air pollution usually hovers at lung-cancer inducing levels, but Xinxiang somehow managed to be even worse. Kudos to you Xinxiang. Then from there we caught a bus to Huixian, and then we caught another bus to the base of the natural area, and finally had to catch another taxi up to the village of Guoliang. It was kind of a hassle, but at least it was cheap. I was amused by the fact that our hour-long train tickets from Zhengzhou to Xinxiang cost only about the equivalent of $0.70. Then I saw Xinxiang, and understood why they couldn’t possibly charge more to get to that place.

Guoliangcun, though, is a pretty amazing place. It is a tiny village of about 300 people located on the top of a cliff in a preserved natural area. They film a lot of Chinese movies up there, and it really is very beautiful. Before they built the rode the locals used to have to climb up to the top of the cliff on a ladder. Then, they built a ridiculously dangerous and narrow road up to the village, opening the place up to numerous Chinese tourists. I was a little disappointed by the number of tourists that were there when we arrived. I had expected an isolated little hamlet, and there were definitely more tourists than I’d envisioned. But part of that was because we’d gotten there on the holiday, and later in the day on Monday, and on Tuesday, a lot of the people left and it was a lot more peaceful. Fallon and I did a little hiking around on the paths, and managed to find an actual trail (not a stone path with zillions of stairs!). We wondered up the trail for quite some time, and decided that it must be some sort of footpath for locals and goatherds who live up in the mountains. We saw one woman while we were on the path carrying a huge load on her back as he headed down the mountain. We also saw signs of possible habitation and lots of evidence of goats. We never did see the goats, but they sold it as a dish in the kitchen at the hostel we stayed in, so they must be up there somewhere. The hike was a little eerie, but really fun, and we ended up hiking all the way to the top of the mountain, where there were some amazing views. Unfortunately, even way out there, the air was really thick and kind of gross, so the view of the amazing karst cliffs was a bit obscured. On Tuesday, we’d been hoping for some better views, but instead the day dawned very rainy. There was a bit of a reprieve in the rain and Fallon and I were able to walk around the village and take some pictures. But then a super thick fog rolled in, and it started to downpour, so we decided to cut our trip a bit short and head back to Zhengzhou a little earlier than planned. The trip back didn’t go quite as smoothly as the way there. We had some bad luck, and it seemed like every step of the way we had to wait for the next bus or train. It only took us about 4 hours to get there, but over 6 hours to get back home. But it was okay, because I think the trip was totally worth it, and I’m only sad we didn’t get a day of clearer air to really be able to see the amazing mountains. I haven’t even looked at the pictures I took yet, but I will try to post them soon.

So, that’s about all I’ve got to say. I’ve only got about 4 more weeks of teaching left, and after that I am hoping to do some traveling before returning stateside. It’s crazy how little time I have, and even more nuts that most of the other foreign teachers are done even before I am, and will be heading out in about three weeks!  Soon it’ll be over, so I’m just trying to enjoy the rest of my time here while I still have it. Then I’ll be heading back on home to ice cream and clean air and the next adventure!

Amusing, ridiculous, dangerous things (a.k.a: I like adjectives)

I realized that it’s almost April and I haven’t yet written any sort of post this month.  So I am going to attempt to rectify this.

Most notably, at the beginning of this month my parents and bothers came to China to visit. I think they had a good time (correction, I've been informed a better description is a WONDERFUL time), and I’m really glad that it worked out for them to visit! The fist weekend they were here we took a trip to Luoyang, which is a city I have been to once before. When I went there the first time, it was during middle of winter so it was great to go again now that the weather has gotten better. We visited an amazing garden where the Peony Festival is held each year. We were a little early for the festival, so only a few of the peonies were actually blooming. Though, personally, I thought that the gorgeous flowering trees were even more beautiful than the peonies the city is famous for. There were hundreds of trees, many with different and vibrant blooms. It was probably the most beautiful garden I’ve ever visited. Even the air there smelled lovely, like sweet flowers and fresh grass, rather than the usual smog/sewer combination I’ve become accustomed to. After we returned from our weekend trip to Luoyang, I worked during the week while my family went off to Xi’an. When they returned all 5 of us went to Beijing. We visited a section of the Great Wall about three hours outside of Beijing, and did a 10 km hike along it. The day we visited the wall was amazing, the sky was clear and vibrantly blue, which is rare for China. I thought it was a really great day, and while the hike might have been a little difficult for some of the members of our party, it was totally worth it.

We spent a last rainy day in Beijing, and then my family returned home, and I headed back to Zhengzhou once again. It was great to see my family, and caused me to realize a few things about myself. Mostly, just how protective I’ve gotten of certain things while I’ve been in China. It’s just that some things are so hard to come by that I have begun to see them as treasures (example: cough drops). I’ve had about a million coughs since coming to China (I hate, HATE, Chinese air), and it sucks to not have any cough drops available when I need them. I’m sure they sell them somewhere in this country, but I haven’t seen any. I’ve had a horrible Chinese version (black liquorish tablets = worse than any cough), and maybe if I tried harder I could find something better. But this isn’t something I think of doing when healthy, and when unhealthy, an adventure though various pharmacies in search of suitable cough drop substitutes is not high on the list. I had recently received a couple of bags from America and had a solid cough drop supply, that is, until it was threatened when basically every member of my family developed some sort of cough (China’s 'Welcome!' to any visitor). Consequently I was faced with a team of hacking visitors and yet found myself only grudgingly handing out cough drops, as if it caused me physical pain to part with them. I’m a horrible person. If they’d have come anywhere near my chocolate stash, hands would have been lost.

Other “interesting” news is that it has been confirmed- my last day of teaching will be June 4^th. I am hoping to do some traveling after that, the length of which is dependent on the availability of funds. I have no idea what I will be doing this summer after I get back, nor exactly what I will be doing next year. I do know that I will for sure be attending graduate school. I applied to master’s programs in biology, and was accepted to all three schools to which I applied. I didn’t apply to many schools because I knew the decision would be hard enough, not being able to visit any of the programs (as is generally customary). And this is indeed the case. I’ve been doing little else besides stressing over the decision. Hopefully soon I will have it figured out. It’s crazy to think that in about two months, my time here will be finished. Where did it go?

When I returned from my spring holiday in late February, I was ready to be done with China. I think the exhaustion of traveling and of seeing someone from home took its toll on me. By the end of my trip I had wished I were going home instead of returning to Zhengzhou. But now the weather has gotten better (I say this as a small sandstorm rages outside), I’ve gotten back into the swing of things, I have some really great friends, and I honestly feel sad to think about leaving. Of course there are certainly a few things I miss from home (including but not limited to: nature and other assorted green things, blue sky, places to go running that don’t involve congested roads or a treadmill, burritos, Ben and Jerry’s, baking and baked goods, air that doesn’t leave me sounding like a TB patient etc.). But there are also a number of things that I will miss about China (including but not limited to: milk tea, my good friends Pancake Lady and Noodle Lady, cheap food in general, seeing at least 4 people riding on a single bicycle/motorbike at once, other ridiculous and dangerous things that amuse me on a daily basis).  How about I give some examples of amusing, ridiculous and dangerous things? On a few separate occasions I have seen men fixing power lines on ladders. Three to four men lean a metal ladder directly against the thick bundle of power lines (not even against the power pole, just the lines themselves) and hold the bottom of the ladder, attempting to balance the poor guy at the top. Safety first. Also, the other day I watched as three men heaved a wheelbarrow full of cement up to a fourth story window using a single rope and a tiny metal pulley.  Of course other men were working directly beneath the swinging wheelbarrow. And finally, just today, as I was riding home on the bus, a car was driving in front of us in the lane that is designated for rapid transit buses and emergency vehicles only. The bus driver was not happy about this, and honked his horn at the car for about 5 solid minutes (including the entire time we waited at a red light). The driver of the car didn’t seem to get the drift, and if anything, just drove slower. So the bus driver got right up on the guy's bumper, and finally the car figured it out and moved over to another lane. But, the bus driver was not through, and swerved over at the car, completely cutting it off and causing the car to swerve into the next lane, where it then hit another car (very slight impact, tiny fender bender). Was I frightened? No. Did I laugh? Yes I did. It was just ridiculous, that the driver of a huge bus (it was the kind with the added accordion-like attachment making it twice as long as a normal bus), carrying at least 80 people, was driving like a maniac. The most humorous part was that nobody else on the bus seemed phased.

So what’s my point? I’m not really sure. I guess I’m just going to miss all these little everyday surprises and adventures that have made my time here, while occasionally difficult, oh, so worth it.

Noodle Lady

It has been a while since I’ve posted anything here. Lately I feel I haven’t had much of interest to say. I’ve been in China for seven months now, and most of the time things seem, well, ordinary. The shock and awe of the first few months has worn off, and now China feels like any other place. At least, most of the time. There are still those moments that catch me off guard, and remind me again what a stranger I still am.

I was struck by one of these moments this evening. I had eaten a large dinner at “Soymilk Place” a restaurant around the corner from our campus. There they sell, as you may have guessed, delicious hot soymilk in giant bowls. After finishing, I headed home stuffed and exhausted, taking a quick detour to pick up supplies for my lesson tomorrow. On my way back I passed by “The Noodle Lady” who is, you guessed it, a lady who sells delicious and incredibly spicy noodles from her kitchen. It’s a place that would violate every health code in the book, if China had any. Yet it’s only made me sick once, so I still frequent her establishment on a bi- or tri- weekly basis. Adding to the appeal is the fact that I can get a giant bag o’ noodles, which usually lasts me two meals, for just 4 yuan, which is roughly sixty cents.  Noodle Lady’s kitchen consists of a sink and a hot plate and the ingredients for her amazing concoctions are stuffed into plastic bags that sit on the floor. Her seating consists of three stools that you can set out on the sidewalk. As I passed by Noodle Lady this evening, there were two old women sitting with her, chatting away and enjoying the warm evening. I said my usual “ni hao” and continued on, but then heard a shout of  “eeeey laowi!!” and turned around to see Noodle Lady beckoning to me. I went to her and she motioned for me to sit, which I did. She then proceeded to place numerous bowls of food in front of me, and shoved a pair of chopsticks into my hand. So what else was I to do? I ate. I sat there on a stool in the middle of the dark sidewalk as three old women asked me questions I couldn’t understand, and ate my second dinner of the evening. I just nodded and smiled as they looked at me and talked and laughed. I did manage, what I think was a quite intelligent, “what is this?” pointing to a noodle-type thing that I had on a previous occasion identified as tapeworm. I don’t know what she said in response, but whatever it was I decided it was much too short a word to mean “tapeworm”, so I was satisfied. As I tried to shove down as much of the food as I could, I glanced over and almost choked. There on Noodle Lady’s table was a newspaper. Not any newspaper, though, but an English newspaper! From my hometown, no less!

In Zhengzhou, there isn’t much of an organized recycling service. Though, like in many places, recyclables can be redeemed for money. Consequently, there are numerous people who dig through the trash to find boxes and bottles and pile them meters high in the backs of bicycle carts. I can’t bring myself to throw plastic bottles or boxes into the trash, so I save them up and periodically take them out to leave on a street corner, where someone will quickly nab them up to be redeemed. In the bottom of one of these boxes there obviously must have been a forgotten newspaper from home, likely used as padding in a package from my mom. Someone in the Noodle Lady camp must have found the paper and decided to keep it as a rare oddity. 

And thus, I found myself eating free noodles on the corner of a dirty street, in a giant city that no one has ever heard of, staring at an oh, so familiar newspaper header, as three old women laughed at me. And I laughed too. I laughed at my burning lips and aching stomach, laughed at my inability to say a simple “no thanks, I ate already.” I laughed at the absurdity of it all, and felt so happy to have had this unique opportunity to travel to the other side of the Earth, and realize just how ridiculous life sometimes can be. 

The Year of the Tiger

Early one chill evening, I stepped off the train, body weary from weeks of travel, my pack weighing heavy on my shoulders. As I rounded the corner into an open alleyway, I was greeted by the sight of an old woman defecating in the gutter- and I knew I was home. Oh, how I love this great city. This pearl of China, that is Zhengzhou.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning. My trip began in mid-January, when three of my fellow teachers and I boarded a train at that very same station, bound for the city of Shenzhen, a mere 24 hours away. We sprung for soft sleepers- a.k.a., a train car with beds that have mattresses. The great thing about soft sleepers is that there are only 4 beds per car, which meant we had the whole car to ourselves. The train ride wasn't too bad, and would have been much better if I hadn't been suffering from a delightful cough that I'd been battling off and on for the previous month or so. The stale, smokey train air did little to help, and I spent most of the ride lying awake, trying to keep my lungs from falling out.  The air in China does wonderful things for one's respiratory system. After we arrived in Shenzhen, we spent two nights with a guy who taught at our school last year. We were able to hop across to Hong Kong for a day, as it is just a subway ride from Shenzhen. Hong Kong was pretty great, especially going there straight from Zhengzhou. It was very western, everyone spoke English, and the city looks like it belongs in more in England (a warm, green, very hilly, semi-tropical England) than in China. The only issue was that they drive on the left side of the road there, which they do not do in the rest of China, so I was constantly in danger of nearly being run over (despite the roads which were painted with warnings to "Look Left!"). In Hong Kong we took a trolly up to Victoria Peak to overlook the city, and then headed to the bar street where we took shots of Vodka an the Russian Ice Bar (complete with furry jackets) and also had Mexican food for dinner. It was the first time I'd eaten any sort of Mexican food, including chips, or salsa, or guacamole, in the six months since I came to China. It was wonderful.

The very next day, we hopped a plane from Shenzhen heading to Bangkok. I actually liked Bangkok, though I think this isn't the opinion of many people who go there. Sadly enough, the air there seemed clearer than it is in Zhengzhou (which is most people's biggest complaint), and the food was awesome. Also, we were utterly amazed, in fact astounded, when at cross walks cars actually stopped and waved you across. In China, at least in Zhengzhou, even if you've got a walk signal, you still must keep a wary eye, because pedestrians never, ever (not even on the sidewalks!) have the right of way. Rather, right of way goes to the biggest vehicle. In Bangkok things were a little more civilized. During our time there we hit up the major tourist attractions: the National Palace, Wat Po, and a few other temples. We also went to a park one afternoon and were walking around a big lake, when we stopped to take some pictures of a small egret. I was busy taking pictures of the bird, when I heard Cary shout, "holy crap, look at that lizard!" Shortly thereafter we realized the lake was full of giant (and I mean giant!) monitor lizards. They were pretty tame and let you get really close to them. It was so strange to see something like that in a lake in the middle of Bangkok. But awesome.

When our days were done in Bangkok we hopped on an overnight bus down to far southern Thailand to head to the beach. We visited the islands Ko Phi Phi (pronounced: Ko P. P.) and Ko Phangan (pronounced: never did figure that one out). They were absolutely beautiful, and I can see why tourists flock there from all over the world. We were pretty much in holiday mode, so we spent most of the time lounging on the beach, reading, tanning, doing a whole lot of nothing. It was great. The clean, warm air cured my black lung, and the food (in Thailand in general) was awesome. The food was probably one of the greatest parts about Thailand. Also, I think the highlight of my time on the islands was the diving trip we took. Cary and Luke are SCUBA certified, and had plans to go diving on Phi Phi, but Lili and I are not, and thought we'd just take a snorkel trip. However we were convinced to go diving (the potential of seeing sea turtles certainly helping the case). I was a little wary, because I'd felt the onset of a migraine earlier that day, plus it was a bit spendy, but I'm so glad I didn't let me talk myself out of it, because it was amazing. I've never been diving before, so I think part of the experience was just the feel of being under water- the calm, serenity of it. The area we went diving is supposedly the second best place in Thailand, and Thailand is one of the top places in the world, so needless to say, it was incredible. We also got really lucky, and the water was as clear as it ever gets, so it was a great time to go.  We didn't see any turtles (because the water was so clear they chose to take us to a different, better reef), but we did see many other things. We saw a huge leopard shark, and lion fish, a cool shrimp thing, and lots of Moray eels, and anemones and clown fish (like Nemo), and a huge sea snake, and of course hundreds and hundreds of other beautiful and colorful fish. The coral was also amazing, and still very well intact. The reefs we went to are still considered basically 100% pristine, which is pretty rare now-a-days. I think my favorite part was toward the end of the second dive as we rounded the reef it suddenly and sheerly dropped off, leaving us floating above the giant blue void, so deep you could barely see the bottom as it disappeared out into nothingness. I've never felt quite so small.

Sadly, the time on the beach had to come to and end, and we met up with a friend of Lili's who flew in from the States, and then the five of us caught another bus to Siem Reap, in Cambodia. The border crossing between Thailand and Cambodia was less than ideal, and I believe it took us somewhere around 5 hours, between the visa acquiring and all the waiting (and it was HOT), for us to cross the narrow strip of land into Cambodia. Cambodia was amazing, but the hardships that country has faced in the recent past were apparent. The poverty of the region was everywhere, and some of the more touristy areas we visited were somewhat miserable (very dirty, and people hassling you every second to buy their goods), but all in all, I liked it. I'd love to go back and spend a little more time there, and get a more in-depth view of the people and the country. But alas, our time was short, and I think we made the best of it we could. We visited Angkor, which if you haven't heard of, is a huge temple complex built over 1000 years ago. Angkor Wat is the largest of the temples, and the whole temple complex stretches over miles. The temple began as a Hindu temple, and then became a sacred Buddhist site, so it has a unique influence. My favorite temple in the complex was the Banyon, which is a temple full of huge stone pillars with faces carved into them. We also visited an amazing temple where trees have taken over, and they are bursting through the stones of the ruins. A picture is worth a thousand words, so I will suggest taking a look at my photo site: http://picasaweb.google.com/achpeterson for more.

Finally, my time in tropical South East Asia drew to and end, and I hopped on a plane to Beijing, where the weather was a far cry from the tropical sunshine. I met up with Devin at the airport in Beijing, as he'd flown all the way to China to see me, and to spend the Chinese New Year here in China. The New Year celebration (taking place on February 14th this year) in Beijing was...loud. Mostly it's a very family oriented holiday, and every single family on every single street appeared to set off fireworks that night. China, claiming the invention of the firework, is consequently very attached to them. All year round they are set off to celebrate any occasion: birthdays, weddings, you name it. The new year though, is something else. It is tradition to light firecrackers and fireworks, to scare away evil spirits for the new year, and the Chinese have held on to this tradition with a vengeance. Devin and I walked around that night, and we couldn't go 50 feet without seeing someone else lighting off fireworks. And of course, in China, there are no regulations on what kind of fireworks you can buy, nor where you can set them off from, so people in any random alley or parking lot can set off huge fireworks (like the kinds you'd see at any 4th of July display in the States). It was fun, almost exhilarating at first. However, once I realized that the holiday is celebrated for 14 days, and that during that time the fireworks and firecrackers, day or night, never, NEVER, stop, it all became a little less charming. Luckily the fireworks waned a little in the middle days of the holiday, but towards the end they picked up again with renewed vigor. My favorite were the people who chose to set off their fireworks in parking lots, which then, of course, set off all of the car alarms in the vicinity. I've spent many a night lulled to sleep by the deafening booms, screeching car alarms, and wailing sirens of ambulances rushing to find one of hundreds of people that must have lost fingers or hands or any number of appendages during all that celebrating.

Anywho, back to the topic, Beijing was great, but cold. Devin and I had a few very full days trying to take in as many of the sites as possible. We visited the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City (man there were a lot of people there that day!) and the Olympic Center. We also visited the Great Wall, and Devin was able to get a sweet Asian boy hair cut. Chinese men (especially young men) take great pride in their hair, and do some pretty amazing/ridiculous things with it. So I was a little worried when we walked in to the barber, who of course didn't speak English, and we were only able to point at a picture of an Asian man on a magazine. However, his hair turned out fairly normal (once the blow drying and large amounts of product were removed). Then after Beijing we hopped a plane for a visit to Xi'an, home of the famous Terra Cotta Warriors. They were really amazing, and it's nuts they were discovered just 30 some odd years ago by a farmer digging a well. In fact, if you want, the farmer is available, and was sitting in the lobby of the visitor center signing autographs, living the life now that he discovered one of China's greatest treasures. There are thousands of warriors, most of them still buried, and all of them have unique faces (at least so far). They have stopped excavation for the time being, as the warriors are also brilliantly painted, but once exposed to oxygen the paint disintegrates. I guess they are working on a way to preserve the paint, before they unearth any more. Xi'an is a really nice city, very clean (as opposed to Zhengzhou, but then again, I'd say Beijing was clean compared to Zhengzhou, so...). It's also a very laid back city, and there's a large Muslim Quarter there, which was a lot of fun to walk around, because it was so crazy and busy, and there were all kinds of weird and interesting foods to try.

Alas, Devin was only here for 10 short days that went by much too quickly. Then he headed back home to Boulder, and I had to return to Zhengzhou, where old women poop in the streets. It was definitely hard to come back here again, but I suppose I really can't complain too much. I had an amazing 6 weeks, and consider myself very lucky that I was able to visit so many places and see so many things.

 I apologize this was so long, I had a lot I wanted to record, for myself as much as everyone else. I doubt anyone has read this far, but if you have congratulations, and I hope this finds you well.

Happy New York!

Well, you may have noticed that I gave this space (the word "blog" really bothers me for whatever reason - as do most recently invented words) a little makeover. I have no delusions of being any sort of visual artist, so if the colors don't look right, I apologize. I just was really sick of my old look so I clicked on random colors until I got bored, and this is what I ended up with.
I don't have a whole lot to say. In fact I'm really tired and considering that it's now after 9, I think I need to be heading off to bed any moment. But I wanted to quickly post and update, as I might not get the chance for a while. My holidays were good, it was definitely weird to be so far from my family, but in the end it turned out all right. Nothing too eventful, as Christmas really isn't celebrated here. Much more popular is New Years. My students all had parties in the classes, and afterwards the teachers put on a talent show (you can see more pictures of these events than you probably care to in my picasa album). The seventh grade at my school consists of 11 classes of roughly 50-60 students. Each class is split into an A and B, so for some classes (example math) the students will all stay together. However, the A and B split into different classrooms for English class, so I'll teach 25-30 students of class A, and then teach the rest of the students of class B the period afterwards. Once put into their class when they enter 7th grade, the students will stay with these same 60 students for a total of three years until they enter high school. Not only do the classes stay the same, but they have all the same teachers that will follow them as they move to 8th then 9th grade. This is very different than in the U.S. and gives the teachers the wonderful responsibility of teaching new material for 3 years. Anyway, for the students the New Year was very special, as it was also celebrating the first year of their class. So each class had a birthday cake to celebrate their one year birthday with their class. Of course there were also slide shows and speeches (which I obviously couldn't understand but appeared to be touching based on the numbers of tears elicited from the emotional 12 year old girls). Good times. New Years is also a popular time to give gifts. I myself received from various students a beautiful silky scarf thing, and two throw pillows, which were a lot of fun to manhandle home on the bus with me. I actually really like them, and am hoping I can figure out a way to maneuver them unnoticed onto the plane home with me. One of my students also gave me a notebook, in which she wrote "Happy New York!!" on the first page, which I found to be quite adorable and couldn't find it in my heart to correct her. Unfortunately I wasn't feeling well, and had to wake up early the next day, so I didn't even make it until midnight on New Year's Eve. Guess that's what happens when you get old.

On new year's day, we had the day off so I took a short trip to Luoyang, which is a city about an hour and half away (by train, 3 by bus) from Zhengzhou. It is home to the Longmen Caves, which were quite incredible (also see photos). It was a beautiful city filled with lovely parks, and I really want to go back in the spring when things are a bit more lively. The highlight of the trip was the fact that one of the teachers from my school is from Luoyang, so I was able to spend the night with his grandparents while I was down there. They were an incredibly sweet couple who fed me like I was starving. Luckily the food was really good, but they kept insisting I eat more and more, physically picking up food and putting it on my plate in front of me. They didn't speak a word of English, but I loved them (because I love most old people...the friendly ones at least). Of course I interact with and consider many of the Chinese teachers as friends, but mostly I just see them in the context of school or when going out, so it was nice to be invited into some one's home and experience another side of their lives. Though this, in part, is due to the fact that Chinese teachers are not allowed to have lives, and those that are unmarried mostly live at the school along with the students. My school is a boarding school (as are most schools of quality in China), so the students are all either in class, study/homework sessions in their classrooms, or scheduled exercise from 7 am until 8:30 pm, at which point they are released to their dorm rooms to finish homework and go to bed. The teachers, consequently, have very similar hours, so many of them live in dorms on the campus too. China has a lot of people (in case you haven't heard), so it's hyper competitive for any sort of job, and this is what is required to make it. I'm not going to lie, I'm so happy I didn't go to school in China. Though, these kids are also a million times smarter than I was in 7th grade, that's for sure.

Anywho, sorry for the tangent. Luckily for me, I will have a break from all this school, school, school for 6 weeks! Huzzah! My break starts Friday! Just two more days until freedom. On Saturday afternoon I'll be hopping on a 24 hour train to southern China, then a flight to Thailand, then three weeks of travel around the beaches/islands of Thailand and Cambodia, then hop on another flight to Beijing then another flight to Xi'an, and then my whirlwind tour will be over and classes start again March 1st. Hopefully I'll have a chance to update you all of my goings on during this time. If not, surely when I get back. Again, hope all is well at home. Happy winter! I'll be thinking of you from my sunny beach in Thailand...