On how I want to travel everywhere when I earn money

Having the luxury of living in a place with an extensive rail and air network, I feel like traveling has suddenly become more accessible to my socioeconomic class (that is when I actually start making my own money and have the opportunity to independently join a socioeconomic class). Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe are within a stones throw and it is easy to make plans that can be realized in the near future. I've recently become infatuated with the idea of visiting Mongolia after our hostel dorm mates told us about their time there. Spending time in a place that hasn't embraced Western capitalism and all its baggage and instead retaining the nomadic lifestyle full of unpaved, unmarked roads in the desert traversed by four wheel drives and noble steed. I know how its cliche but I am amazed at how much of this world there is to see.

And I still haven't visited all the places I want to see in China! The list is long and is continually growing and I hope that I have both the time and capital to make the daydreams become a reality. It's just too bad about those student loans...

In other news, Alex and I are still in Shanghai. We discovered an arcade that spans an entire floor in a shopping mall that has games that I have never seen before including card games that virtually come to life when you place these cards (like Magic cards -are those even cool anymore?) on the table, Dance Dance Revolution with a twist (incorporates hand movements!) and games that test your reflexes and balance. Arcades have come a long way from Skee Ball and shooting baskets (which I'm surprisingly skilled at)! We switched hostels to a more central location in Huangpu near all the fancy buildings with all the lights that make Shanghai's skyline famous.

The best thing about this move is that there is a delicious Chinese restaurant downstairs (with an ENGLISH menu!) that serves the best 鱼香茄子 ("Fish flavored egg plant", does not taste like fish) I've ever had. Sorry Liz.

In about two weeks Alex and I are heading to Guam to both save and earn some money working for my parents and various other organizations willing to hire us for a short amount of time. First and foremost, of course, I will be a live in nanny for my sister's kids, where my one goal is to have them perform a coordinated song and dance routine reminiscent of the Von Trapp kids. Two months is a long time.

Until next time.

On how I love Chinese street food!

One of the worst things about not being fluent in Chinese (in my opinion) is ordering food. I often get flustered when ordering food and try my best to avoid it when it involves actually speaking to someone. I've been tricked into ordering too much, or have ordered not enough food (ie. two crabs) that the whole process of going to restaurants has traumatized me. Ordering food at restaurants isn't just a matter of saying what you want and instead incorporates a long series of questions and answers, and you know how Chinese is with tones, if it were a beauty pageant, I would've said something about world peach rather than peace. This "conversation" is also preceded by the antsy server who is hovering as you browse through the menu (that hopefully has pictures). I feel like I'm being interrogated for a crime or that I'm taking the waitress away from more pressing issues.

In an effort to reduce my restaurant anxiety, I've taken to the streets.

Nothing I can say can give street food justice. The whole industry incorporates everything I believe in; its cheap, fast, fresh, lots of variety, and the process involves pointing and saying how many you would like. Street food encompasses a large range of food so you will definitely find one you like the most. My personal favorite is the jidanbing (not to be confused with jIAnbing), which translates into "egg pancake". It's a fried dough pancake thing mixed with an egg, topped with some black bean sauce (I think), spicy stuff, lettuce and is served like a taco (something tells me I won't be able to make a living as a food critic). Price for one of these is usually 4RMB ($.60). The picture below is of a premium jidanbing which is pretty much a jidanbing sandwich.

Another street food staple is "chuan"/"chuar", which are skewers but nothing like what we are accustomed to in the states. These pictures were all taken during my first trip to China in 2007.

The bottom type of chuan is squid which I enjoy very much

random types of vegetable wrapped between tofu pieces

These are skewered pieces of everything you can imagine that range in price from 1RMB to 5RMB. They are cooked on a grill (don't worry, these people are professionals!) and spices and sauces are put at your request.

Can't you already see the appeal of street food? I know Alex has. I'm so proud of him, he can go out and buy street food all by himself!

Another type of street food I recently discovered is fried rice/noodles. One of these stands happen to exist right outside our hostel here in Shanghai. A big plate of fried rice or fried noodles costs 10RMB ($1.50)! Alex and I have been patrons of their stand -they even have a little picnic table to sit at, a sure sign of their success - the last two nights.

I should also mention that big dumplings ("dabao") are 1RMB each (the most expensive ones are)!

I feel like I've gotten so excited over street food that my coherence and wit have faded away.

Anyway, while street food is amazing, there is still a lot I have to experience (that occurs within walls) when it comes to Chinese cuisine. My goal is to become familiar with the Chinese food characters/terms so I won't have to deal with the ambiguity of the restaurant scene. Or I guess I could just speak Chinese more. Oh well.

tricked

I would be lying if I said that the reason why I haven't been posting is because of a lack of relevant material. So I won't lie.

After Liz and Colin left Beijing, Alex and I found ourselves at a loss of what to do. There was no more herding around, sights to be seen or awkward situations to find ourselves in. Actually, none of that is true because we're in China and ambiguity is a way of life here. So much for not lying.

In an effort to lift our spirits, Alex and I made our way down south to Qingdao, a city of beaches (right, Liz?) and beer. It didn't take us long to realize that Qingdao was more of a "summer" town, which is much more enjoyable when it is actually hot. The town was far from hot- it was just as cold as it was in Beijing in addition to the crippling wind, not to mention our hostel was had no form of a heating system. Luckily for us, we had our own heating system- Alex's zero degree sleeping bag.

I won't even go into what we did (or didn't do) in Qingdao because of how depressing it was. We didn't even go to the Tsingtao beer factory.

--

We made it back to Shanghai in an effort to do something productive while waiting for our contracts to be prepared. Our train ride here was another one of those "stories" that could only happen in China.

Because we were tricked by the cab driver into paying 40RMB for our cab fare to our hostel that was less than 5 minutes away (he didn't even have the decency to drive us around to make it seem like it was far away), I refused to take a cab to the train station. Our only other option was for us to take a bus (which is really not an option when one is carrying large backpacks) or to walk. So we walked. Qingdao is unique in the sense that there are actually hills in town, whereas a majority of cities are relatively flat. With at least 26 pounds on my back, a smaller backpack in the front (think of how marsupials carry their babies) and a camera bag on my shoulder and poorly made Chinese boots, these hills (nothing compared to Seattle, of course) were a bitch to walk. Of course, in true Chinese fashion, it goes without saying that we were hassled for hotels or whatever along the way. We have to love China!

There were two things of note when we finally got on the train. The first is that Alex and I were not in the same cabin, the second is that these cabins were full of rowdy children! Of course, Alex immediately became a local celebrity. After we arranged for us to be in the same cabin, the cabin that held only us and these kids, Alex and I decided to play a game of Scrabble. Alex, being the local celebrity, was immediately bombarded by curious 11 year olds. I'm sure if there was enough space, they would've lifted him up and had him crowd surf. Anyway, these kids had the opportunity to practice their English, while learning some new words that we played on the board. According to their leader, Li Gang (when I asked him if he was their leader, he said yes. All the kids kept asking him for advice or help or something), they were on their way to Shanghai to participate in a competition where they use computers to design airplanes. We could tell that they were from affluent families- some had PSPs or MP3 plays, most had fancy cellphones and they all had so many snacks and KFC for dinner (they were all a little pudgy, it was cute).

At one point, one kid was asking Alex what kind of food he liked. He asked things like "Do you like sausage" or "Do you like cabbage", which I thought were pretty cute and endearing.

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We rode the Maglev train (the only functioning train levitated by magnets!) yesterday. Unfortunately, the train reaches its highest speed -420km/hr- from 10 in the morning to about 6 at night, so Alex was a little disappointed by that. We still got to ride it at 300 km/hr.

Anyway, my fingers are really cold so I have to stop now. Something tells me that the only way to get warm in China is to be in the (real) south.

Great Wall

We climbed this part of the Great Wall yesterday. I was surprised there weren't massive amounts of tour buses, or even people. We were practically the only ones there!

Check out Alex's Flickr for our own set of Great Wall pictures (this one is from Wikipedia, I don't have access to a lot of bandwidth).

Goodbye Mama Naxi

It's pronounced Na-Shee.

The first thing Mama Naxi said to us when we arrived in Lijiang was "Mama take care of you...I give you free banana juice"

We stayed at Mama Naxi's Guesthouse while in Lijiang. At the time of writing in our trusty Lonely Planet (published May 2009), Mama Naxi was in the process of building a second guesthouse. By the time we arrived (November), Mama Naxi had completed three guesthouses and is on her way to her fourth guesthouse. If I were still in the Business School, I would love to do a marketing case study on her hostel empire. Old Lijiang is a small place, and for Mama Naxi to have four guesthouses within the city walls implies her control of the youth hostel market share. She seems to know what people like- cute dogs, kisses on the cheek, small gifts and very reasonable prices. Why can't I be like her? Mama Naxi needs to teach at the Foster School of Business.

Since there were no direct routes to Beijing, we had to go back to Kunming (the biggest city in Yunnan) in order to fly out. This involved an 8+ hour bus ride on a large bus (like a Greyhound) on a two lane road that drivers saw as a four lane road. All types of vehicles were on the road- construction trucks, dump trucks, big buses, minibuses, cars, three wheeled cars, trucks with exposed engines that looked like toy cars, bicycles, motorcycles... really everything you can imagine, with every type trying to overtake the other. We feared for our lives- if we weren't going to drive into an oncoming car because we were trying to pass a slower vehicle then we were likely to fall off an unguarded edge off a cliff.

I was on the verge of throwing up the entire time.

We were in transit for nearly 18 hours (we left Lijiang at 830 and arrived in Beijing at one), we had difficulty trying to find our hostel. I found it ironic that the one place that Liz and I are familiar with, it took us a very (very) long time to find our hostel. Our cab driver was a little whiny and scolded us for not knowing the proper address of the hostel so after 20 minutes or so of aimless driving, we decided to just walk around. We walked to the notorious Sanlitun bar street in hopes that someone would know the name of the hostel we were staying at. We were solicited by a ten year old boy saying that he knew where the place was and that he would show us. We were a little skeptical but got over ourselves when we realized that the people who worked at the bar were making fun of us for being scared of a little boy. I was afraid that this boy was going to lead us into a dark alleyway where a gang of his peers would beat us up and take our money. The scene was very likely- this boy was walking very fast through random alleyways that were either really dark or had sketchy bars and clubs that were away from the main street. He finally led us to a shifty looking hostel that actually wasn't the hostel we were planning on staying at and was probably one of "those" kinds of hotels that could be rented by the hour. While this wasn't the place, I still paid my dues to the kid (thankful that he didn't try to beat us up) and gave him 20 kuai (about $3).

Luckily for us, the man at the front desk was very nice and pointed us in the right direction. Kind of. We finally made it to our hostel after an hour and a half of wandering the vicinity. I was going to demand that we not pay for a whole day since we arrived after midnight but I felt shy. I've decided that I'm all talk when it comes to getting things my way.

Anyway, its cold in Beijing (really cold). How are you?

Hot pot in Lijiang

Despite a developed transportation network (extensive railway, flight and bus systems), our trip across China proved to be very ambitious. For the three weeks dedicated to traveling, we made it to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Hainan, Kunming, Dali, Lijiang and Beijing, skipping Guilin, Yangshuo, the Tiger Leaping Gorge (in Lijiang), Chongqing and Xian [These names probably don't mean anything to you]. With these places on our original list, I don't understand how we thought visiting all of these places would be realistic.

ANYWAY

We made it to Beijing. How we got to Beijing is an interesting story, and it all begins with the night before we leave Lijiang. We've been using our Lonely Planet religiously, especially taking note of their recommendations for food. Disappointed by our mediocre feast from the night before at Mama Fu's, we hoped that the Blue Papaya would be a better representative of Lijiang cuisine. True to her job's namesake, our waitress was hovering over us antsy to take our order. She recommended hot pot, since everyone around us was eating it and seemed to be having a good time. Lonely Planet highly recommended the place so it didn't hurt to order something we weren't so hot about (haha).

When in China, ordering something with uncertainty can result in a painful experience. Our experience at the Blue Papaya is a perfect example of a meal gone wrong. Without realizing the option of no spice, we had ordered a our hot pot with a spice that would ruin our entire night. Taking into account Liz's pescetarian diet, we had ordered a fish hot pot. Fish in China comes with all the bones. Added with the boiling hot broth (that was literally on fire for a majority of our dinner) and a spice that could have blinded us, there were aspiring Chinese pop stars - complete with flashy outfits and headset microphones - singing as loud as they can through crackling amplifiers and their entourage of loafers toting menus of Chinese classics to the hordes of tourists (probably having a better time with their milder hot pots), there was nothing pleasurable about the experience. It didn't help with the occasional street vendor approaching us with random trinkets, fruit, flowers and cigarettes.

There were too many things going on with our meal, which was very frustrating since we were all hungry and wanted to get some kind of nourishment from our expensive meal. If we were not choking on small fish bones or on the verge of passing out from the spice, we were assaulted by vendors or had our conversations halted by competing singer/songwriters singing as loud as they can (here is another promising career for our singer/songwriter friends).

And of course this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our trip to Beijing.

Stay tuned!

Preview for the rest of our trip:

10 hour bus ride on a 2 lane road

being led by a child to our destination

walking around at 2 in the morning trying to find our hostel