The URL is:  http://www.thoughtbyscott.smugmug.com/China/2009-Vacation. Here, I will put up a gallery for each day and/or place and/or people I visited.

For those of you at my work, they block smugmug, so you’ll have to find a computer outside of work if you want to see the additional pix. Smugmug has one outstanding feature, I am able to upload very large .jpg files and then you can choose from a number of sizes, from small all the way up to the original size. This lets you be in control of what you want. Please check it out…and I will be adding to it until I get to the present…

I am breaking with my other posts and will make these pictures 50% larger than my other posts’ pictures. I don’t mind saying that I was amazed at how cool some of them came out and it was all just from experimenting with my camera in the tourist tunnel in Shanghai. They have various light displays in the tunnel, so I took longer exposures while moving the camera, then processed them in different ways using Adobe Lightroom. I hope you enjoy them, too…

Dumpling chefs at Yu Yuan's famous restaurant...

The famous dumplings...

Because it was such a long line, I got two orders (just in case I wanted to eat more). I only wanted two or three more before I was pretty stuffed. I have the other order to a lady who was getting plastic bottles out of the trash. She was very appreciative, so all turned out well!

Then, after I had tea with Tracy that afternoon, I went walking around to see what I could see. I found an area that was more like a hutong, where there were no wairen (foreigners) and it made me feel a little better. Shanghai had more foreigners than I saw anywhere else, and while most were friendly enough, it just reminded me an era not too long ago when foreigners came in and set up in what were called “treaty port” cities, including Shanghai. These were gained by invasions by other countries, including the United States, England and Japan. This is another part of US history that I don’t remember learning in my American History class. It is amazing how biased and editorial the learning we get in our supposed “free” country is.

This is not to say, of course, that it is any different elsewhere. In the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, for instance, there was little mention of the fact that the United States ended the war with Japan, with the Chinese government largely withdrawn to the Southwest of China waiting for this to happen. There was no mention of the A-bombs at all. So, every country tells its citizens a completely distorted version of events. I wish that we could get an unbiased version of history, but it seems like human nature prevents it.

Anyway, after wandering around until evening, I went to the Hotel, got all my camera gear and headed to the waterfront. I was going to take some great pictures (yes, with a tripod, Dennis (and Ken))…

…was I in for a big disappointment!!! The waterfront was a construction zone, getting ready for a Shanghai Expo 2010. So, you couldn’t walk along it, or even get a picture of the famous Pudong skyline, and you could only get the Bund buildings (as the main one in this post) from the same side of the street.

Well, I took the tourist tunnel, hoping to get some good pictures in there and on the Pudong side…

You are now entering a dimension of sight and sound...

The pearl tower from an unpleasing perspective...

The only bright spot of my photographic night was in the tourist tunnel itself! In fact, some of the exposures and processing I was able to do I thought came out really cool!

I will do a final post from China featuring these abstract creations in bigger sizes (I apologize in advance to those of you with smaller screens).

The next morning, I went to the airport and had a pretty uneventful trip home. All the flights were on time and there were no problems of any sort. What a pleasant surprise!

I want to thank all of my friends in the US and in China for making my trip so enjoyable and for traveling along with me as I posted on my blog. I don’t really like this blog format, but it is OK for photographs. The problem is that it’s too difficult to do some simple blog reading (to figure out what post is what, for instance).

So, I am already thinking about going to Europe in a couple of years…

Until then, enjoy life, it’s shorter than you think!

Scott

I took a fast train (D5411, which would go upwards of 180 miles an hour at times) from Nanjing. The trip took about 2 hours. When I got off with all my luggage (a big rolling suitcase, a carry on size rolling suitcase, a large daypack, a camera bag, and a belly pack), I realized that I was pretty stupid for not having made a hotel or hostel reservation, as I now had no idea of where I would stay and had to drag all this with me until I found a place. I took the subway from the train station to People’s Square and decided I would walk until I found a Motel 168 (Shanghai’s equivalent of a Motel 6). There were stairs everywhere (including walkovers just to cross the street) which were quickly draining my enthusiasm. I walked about 7 blocks and then, as if I had planned it, a Motel 168 appeared!

I got a room for 2 nights and got in touch with Tracy, who is a professor at Shanghai University. Tracy is good friends with Zhang Yi, who is a visiting scholar and one of my English students in Tallahassee (Hi, Yi!). Tracy came to the Hotel and we walked back to People’s Square to visit the Shanghai Museum.

The Museum has a very impressive display of pottery and ceramics, jade, official seals (stamps), Chinese painting, Chinese calligraphy, etc. The nice thing about it was that the displayed collection wasn’t so large that it overwhelmed you with quantity, rather each piece was extremely well preserved and a good specimen of what it was intended to be. I am amazed at the quality of workmanship in pottery that is thousands of years old!

Here are a couple of examples from the collection.

The first is a landscape done in 1346, during the Yuan Dynasty (the one started by Chengjisihan (Ghengis Khan)):

Chinese Landscape painting from 1346

The second is a calligraphy sample from 1313 (also the Yuan Dynasty):

Calligraphy dating from 1313

After going to the museum, Tracy was going to take me out to dinner at a fashionable (and really good) Sichuan restaurant. Unfortunately, it was so fashionable that by the look of the line waiting for a table, it looked like it would take until the next day! Seriously, there were well more than 200 people waiting in line. It was on the fourth floor of a building and its English name was simple and cool: Spicy Joint.

We decided to try another restaurant that Tracy knew about, but had not tried. It was a fairly long taxi ride away (half because the traffic in Shanghai is terrible and this was rush hour). She had called ahead for reservations, so we were seated promptly. The food was delicious, including my happiest food surprise in China….frog legs! Before you turn away, I had tried these one time in a restaurant in the Untited States and I thought they were pretty bad. I could not see why anyone would want to eat them…they were a little fishy tasting and chewy. But, they were also frozen and I realized they were probably not the creme de la creme of frog legs, so I made a mental note to try them again. This was the time, as Tracy ordered them. OMG, they were fantastic! I can now heartily recommend that you try frog legs…but ONLY at a place that makes them fresh and knows how to cook them.

OK, they did taste a little like chicken, but they were delicious!

The rest of the meal was very good, too, including a standout fish dish (partly standing out because it was the first fish I had in China that did not have bones to watch out for!):

Another delicious dish in Shanghai...

More good food!

The other dishes were (clockwise from top left): a chicken dish which we both thought was not special, a very nice spicy cabbage, salty duck (though a heated kind, not cold…it was very good!), pressed bean of some type (not tofu), and a green bean type dish.

After dinner, Tracy treated me to a Dairy Queen and we called it a night.

The next day, after she had to attend meetings, we got together at a park for tea (the main picture, above), and visited a temple in the old park, Yu Yuan. The park was relatively peaceful and quiet and a nice place to talk and unwind.

It was very nice to meet Tracy, who is studying the environment and would like to do research on ways to stop algae blooms.

Tracy, thank you so much for showing me Shanghai!

This is about the fourth completely different post I’ve written:

Nanjing is a very difficult city to write about in a meaningful way. There are so many facets to the place, each of which is very powerful and could easily fill the mind, yet which together create a discord in my mind. I will try to unravel what I mean without delving too deeply into the topics I discuss…

Some of the main things that come to mind in thinking about Nanjing (which means “South Capital”, as Beijing means “North Capital”) are:

The Nanjing Massacre

This dark event in history, which took place at the end of 1937, is not widely known about in the United States. The Japanese invaded China, where Nanjing (called “Nanking” at the time) was the capital. The Chinese forces withdrew in advance of the Japanese onslaught, leaving the civilian population to fend for itself. The Japanese then perpetrated one of the greatest war crimes in history, killing hundreds of thousands (the exact number is disputed, but the number is around 300,000) of innocents, raping thousands of women and losing any sense of morality. They did such gruesome things as using living humans for bayonet practice. You can’t really call this an “incident”, as it unfolded over a period of several weeks.

This event has cast a huge shadow over China’s relationship with Japan ever since, because Japan has never even formally acknowledged that it took place. In fact, the Japanese prime ministers have annually rubbed salt into this old wound by visiting a war memorial site that houses many of the war criminals that perpetrated the Nanjing Massacre.

When I was a navigator in the United States Air Force, I was stationed in Japan for a year and nine months (this was in 1989-1991). I visited Hiroshima while I was there and it is amazing how the Japanese portray themselves as innocent victims to United States aggression. What is missing in that portrayal is the complete disregard for any human life (other than Japanese lives) that the country as a whole showed during the 1930s until they were finally stopped by the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The morality involved in these events is overwhelming, simply due to the numbers of people whose lives were horribly affected. The Nanjing Massacre overwhelms the rest of the city’s illustrious history because of this scope and because it happened less than 100 years ago, so that there are a lot of people walking around today that still grieve about their own, personal loss…

Reflecting on an unpleasant past...

Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat Sen)

The most amazing thing about Sun Zhong Shan is that he is the one individual that is equally admired by the Chinese Communists, the Chinese Kuomintang (the Nationalists, led by Jiang Jieshi (called Chiang Kai-Shek by Westerners) who fled to Taiwan after losing the post World War II civil war in China), and even by United States leaders.

For those of you unfamiliar with this history, Sun was instrumental in overthrowing the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and establishing the Republic of China in 1912. China had been ruled by Emperors (and intermediary lords of several territories before the next dynasty founder united them) for thousands of years, so breaking the chain of dynasties was a major accomplishment and has given Sun a status in China similar to George Washington in the United States as the “father of the country”.

In fact, everyone knows about Mao Zedong’s portrait at the north end of Tiananmen Square, but every Worker’s Day (May 1) and National Day (October 1), Sun’s portrait is also proudly displayed in Tiananmen Square.

Because he established the capital in Nanjing, Sun wanted to be buried there. When he died in 1925, plans began for a Mausoleum befitting his importance to the Chinese people. The mausoleum was constructed from 1926-1929. It has become a standard place for leaders from all over the world to visit when they journey to China.

The steps get steeper close to the top...

Historical Capital

Nanjing, like several other cities in China, has been a capital of China (or of an interim state between Chinese dynasties) several times over its history. In addition to serving as the capital during the Republic of China years before Mao reestablished Beijing as the capital, the first emperor of the Ming dynasty made Nanjing the capital of China in 1368.

An illustrious past...

Modern city

In addition to the history of the city, Nanjing is a very modern city in many aspects. I detected a lot of Western influences in the city, from supermarkets to shopping districts, Nanjing is squarely looking toward the future.

The last 150 years of history, which has been very difficult for China, has caused many Chinese to look toward the West for inspiration.

As a sentimentalist, I hope that the young generation will understand the richness of Chinese culture and won’t embrace the Western ways too deeply. It won’t be too long (from a historical perspective, in any case) before China reasserts its role as one of the world’s leading nations. People in the United States don’t have much of an understanding of the world before the US was a world power. For most of the last few thousand years; however, China has been one of the great civilizations, and its history has been continuous. It is as if Egypt, Greece or Rome continued to this day as a civilization in the West.

I hope more people develop an understanding of how truly wonderous it is to have this ancient culture still living in the 21st century and not let petty political differences stand in the way of appreciating this amazing civilization.

...and a promising future...

____________________

As you can see, Nanjing brings a lot of feelings out in me that are often in conflict with each other (for instance: Republic of China establishment versus historical Dynastic Capital  or Nanjing Massacre Site versus dynamic, thriving, modern city). One thing it definitely did, though, was to make me think…

The Dao is often only seen after it has been taken...

Thanks to everyone for reading my blog (or at least looking at the pictures) I will finish it when I have time at home and will post a lot of pictures on my picture site: http://www.thoughtbyscott.smugmug.com

____________________________________________________________________

First of all, Qian…I decided I better put up the food from Nanjing right away, before I continue my ongoing narrative, since I know you would be anxious to find out what I ate. I didn’t find the restaurants you picked out, but I went with two nice older French people to a very good restaurant and had a few good dishes. I didn’t want you to stop reading, as I will put the pictures of the food below this next item…

To one of the readers of this blog…

…SURPRISE!!!

Please post a comment if you are the one…

Guess who...

I was trying to figure out how to make this a really funny surprise. For instance, I was thinking of having this gentleman act like one of the people in the background of a picture (but make it a little more than background, so someone who hasn’t seen him for a while might just recognize him). But, this is one of those “small world” deals that is pretty amazing. I met him at the Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat Sen) Memorial as we were both getting on a bus to go back to town. He spoke very good English, so I took a break from my poor Chinese and we discussed several typical things, such as where we live, etc. He said he has one friend who lives in Florida. As is turns out, this friend happens to be a good friend of mine, who is reading this blog! This man is not from Nanjing, but another city in China, who was here on a business trip. What are the odds of striking up a conversation at a bus stop in Nanjing and having you both know the same person very well, when you live in Tallahassee, Florida (a town the vast majority of Chinese have never even heard of)??? I mean, we had to have the conversation and have it get that deep to even find out this is the case!

(By the way – if I haven’t received a comment by the time I come home, I’ll reveal the identity of our mystery guest.)

____________________________________________________________

Food in Nanjing…

So, I will change this part of the post to a new one when I get to Nanjing in the narrative, but I have at least one interested reader who want to see what I had…

Part of first night's dinner in Nanjing

Last dinner in Nanjing

I know, one thing is missing…the duck’s blood soup or bean noodles. It’s my fault, in that I didn’t learn how to say “blood” in Chinese, and my pantomime of blood coming out of the duck got us spicy duck’s neck (on the right), which was very good, but isn’t what I was asking for. Well, you know what they say…I guess that will give me something to come back for!

For those who don’t know, the bottom picture’s dishes are (in a clockwise spiral from the left):

1) Lion’s Head Soup – No, they didn’t kill a big cat for my dinner…it is a big pork meatball in a broth with a leafy vegetable.

2) A vegetable dish recommended by one of the restaurant’s employees as Nanjing food, the sauce tastes like it has soy sauce, vinegar and sugar. It was very delicious.

3) Spicy duck’s neck ??? – this is an educated guess, since I thought I was ordering duck’s blood soup

4) Salty duck – A Nanjing specialty served cold, it is very good!

5) Chou dofu – Also known as smelly tofu, or stinky tofu. This was probably the stinkiest I have had. It tastes OK, but it wasn’t my favorite.

Also, I didn’t get the restaurant’s name, but it’s a pretty big one 300m south of Fuzimiao, with the first Hanzi being 王 (Wang). It was very good. If you know the name, please put it in a comment, so I’ll know it, too. I can recognize if it’s the right one. Thanks.

Next, I’ll go back to the narrative…干杯 (ganbei, or, bottoms up!)…

Well, after leaving Lugu Hu the morning of Sunday, November the 1st, all I wanted to do was to be in Nanjing with my business done. It would take me three days, some uncomfortable time, and a huge shipping bill in Kunming, before my goal was realized…

I retraced my steps because I had left my biggest bag, along with all the tea and tea equipment I bought in Kunming, with Alan and Grace (my coworker Janet’s, nephew and wife, you may remember) in Kunming. So, this was really an odyssey of my own making (which only makes it worse…it’s always better when you feel like there’s nothing you could have done to prevent your troubles!!!)…

But, I’m getting ahead of myself…our story starts on the first night in Lugu Hu…

Trouble at Lugu Hu

To start with, the hotel we stayed at had people who worked there who did the best they could to make sure we were satisfied, but there were some problems. One was that when we got there, there was no water. Apparently they have some equipment (I’m guessing a pump) they have to start to get the water running. Well, the person who did this was at dinner at the time. So, we went out looking for dinner. This poor girl caught up to us, out of breath, and explained how sorry she was and that it was her fault. She had left her dinner to track us down and let us know she would have the water on when our dinner was finished. I felt so bad for her. If you know anything about the Chinese, you should know that it is not good to disturb them when they are eating!

We asked her for recommendations for a place to eat and she suggested a barbeque restaurant. Then we found out that the place she was eating was a 10 minute walk away and was also a barbeque restaurant, so we all (four of our six Chinese friends, Saad (remember, it’s pronounced Sai-eed) and I) all headed for the restaurant she was eating at. I don’t have pictures, but the tables all had these tiny stools (common in China, but a little uncomfortable for my large frame) and a table that had a grill in the center with a bed of coals. We ordered several things, including pork, vegetables, fish, etc. It was OK, but it wasn’t great. There were only two dry condiments that were together in one small bowl for each of us – a hot chili type powder and I don’t know what the other powder was. Anyway, we made it through dinner. The reason I’m mentioning all of this is I’m not sure where I ate something that made me uncomfortable and gave me diarrhea on the bus trip, but it could have been that meal…maybe undercooked pork or something…

The next morning, another of our guests was very cranky, with good reason. His room did not have a heater (as mine did) and the water was again not working. The girl, whose name is Ivy (I don’t know her Chinese name), again profusely apologized, but our uncomfortable guest apparently made it clear that he was not a happy camper. When I spoke with her, she was clearly a little panicked at this. I told her over and over not to worry about it, that  everyone makes mistakes and that this was not the end of the world.
__________________________________________________________________

Ivy

It might help to mention that in our conversation the night before, we learned that she lives a two hour journey “over the mountain” in a place that has no electricity or running water and is a teacher to the children there. She was trying to recruit Saad to be an English teacher, but no electricity or running water might be a little more roughing it than most people would want to handle in this day and age. Also, she comes to Lugu Hu on the weekends and works for free. She spoke passably good English, so she obviously is trying very hard to improve herself.

In any case, given the conditions she lives in and the fact that she wasn’t getting paid to run away from her dinner to satisfy our “needs” in our $13 hotel rooms with in-room bathrooms, I thought it hardly fair to come down on her for making any mistake. Especially since she was sincerely trying to help us out.

I felt so bad for her that I gave her one of these medallions that I had purchased from the US mint to give as presents. It has George Washington on the front and a handshake on the back with the word “Friendship”. Ironically, it has a peace pipe as well. I thought it was very strange to use the white man’s dealings with native Americans (mostly brutal genocide, land grabbing, treaty breaking and creating alcoholics) as the model for “Friendship”, but I liked the sentiment, in any case.

Before we left, Ivy told me that she wanted to give me something. First, she tried to give the medallion back, protesting that it was far too expensive (Including the display box, it was $6). I refused to let her return the gift. She then gave me a muffler that her Musuo friend had made by hand. I was really touched by the generosity of this girl from the Chinese countryside. I guess she appreciated my patience and kindness to her. I think that’s what life is all about, and that if you try to put yourself in someone else’s position, you won’t be so quick to assume the worst.

I got a picture with Ivy before I left…

Scott and his friend, Ivy, at Lugu Hu

__________________________________________________________________

This brings me back to the odyssey…I hadn’t eaten much the day before. A breakfast in a local restaurant consisting of two fried eggs that were done “sunny side up” (with a liquid yolk, another possible food culprit), but with a unique type of flaky crust that was pretty tasty, and a big, pancake-like food without any butter or syrup. It, too, was very good.

Bus ride from hell…

I told you about the rest of the activities at Lugu Hu, so I’ll cut to the chase…I woke up the morning of our departure and knew today would be miserable. I had the same symptoms I had had in Lijiang after my bout with a food problem there…uncomfortable, diarrhea and extreme gas. The difference today would be that I was facing an eight hours bus ride over very bumpy terrain!

To keep this story from being too drawn out, I took my first crap in a public toilet in China, which was not pleasant at all. I did have enough tissue with me. I didn’t even feel embarrassed when squatting with walls that were only about 4 feet high and having tons of gas and noise come out, along with the unmistakeable sound of diarrhea. The reason I didn’t feel embarrassed is because I figured that I wasn’t the first to have this problem and I wouldn’t be the last. Besides, it was either this, or go in my pants, so I just sucked it up and dealt with it.

I felt a little better on the bus, though by the time I got to our Panba hostel in Lijiang (as Saad said, it felt like coming home after our long bus ride), I had to get to the bathroom to get rid of the last of the food menace, whatever it was…

Resetting and feeling better

I was going to go straight through (jump on another 8 hour bus to Kunming), but the diarrhea, the fact that I had no clean clothes to change into and that I would be arriving at 2 – 3 in the morning convinced me to stay a night in Lijiang. After recuperating, doing laundry, making reservations at the Hump Hostel in Kunming, and for a bus trip at a more reasonable hour, things were a lot better the next morning.

Saad, too, was not feeling up to par after all we had been through. He was going to go to the Tiger Leaping Gorge, but reneged on that idea and decided to get on the bus with me to Kunming….

This bus ride was uneventful. The only notable thing that I thought was unusual is that the ticket price included a stop with a free meal. It was a soup kitchen (or school cafeteria, or prison,…whatever picture gets you the idea) like set up where they took a sectioned aluminum tray and scooped a big, sticky lump of rice and three other dishes and gave them to you. You picked two chopsticks out of a bin (washed, not disposable), found a place to sit, and ate your chow. The food wasn’t great, but it wasn’t that bad, either. I didn’t take a picture, because I didn’t know that’s what we were stopping for.

The bus is the one in the main picture, and here are a couple I tried to have a conversation with on the way, though it took about 10 minutes and a lot of  head scratching to discuss even rudimentary topics. Not much fun when you’re tired and not feeling your best…

A couple on the bus from Lijiang to Kunming

The Hump Hostel

The hostel I stayed at for the night in Kunming is named the Hump (for flying the Hump in WWII, where Kunming was the receiver of many of the payloads of the cargo planes flying in supplies during the war). They had a wall with the Flying Tigers on it and the employees all wore T-shirts with the shark mouth like they paint on the airplanes. I had to let them know that I was actually a member of the Flying Tigers when I was in the Air Force. They recommissioned the wing and our C-130s actually had the mouth painted on them. As big and fat as they were, though, it looked more like a pig chewing on a plug of tobacco than a scary tiger shark, but it was kind of cool to be a little part of what the hostel was dedicated to.

The restaurant/bar at the Hump had a cool view from the deck:

View from the Hump Hostel in Kunming

Post Office

Alan picked me up as soon as he could squeeze a little time in. We went to the post office and packed up two boxes worth of stuff. He had a lunch meeting he had to attend, so we said our goodbyes. I knew it would be expensive, but with the Pu’er tea and the tea making utensils, I didn’t want to send them by boat. I figured it would cost $100 or so…I was in for sticker shock…It cost me $300 (US) to send two packages via Air Mail to the US. Ouch! Alan had already left, so I was very glad to have gotten the 2500Y from two different cards before I left Kunming the first time (their ATMs don’t accept 4 digit PINs, so Alan and Grace had to take me to the main office of the Bank of China, as I believe I detailed in another post).

Kunming to Nanjing

So, I had enough RMB (Chinese currency) to pay for the postage and the 1450Y that the flight cost, and enough to pay for the Sunflower Youth Hostel in Nanjing for three nights…but my comfortable reserve soon turned into a dire shortage of currency. But more on that in a minute…

I said goodbye to my friend, Saad…

Saad and Scott parting ways...

…then I got a taxi to the airport and bought a plane ticket. I was very flustered and my bags were in a state of disarray (since I just got my big one back and had sent things from it in the Post Office). I tried to get things together the best I could, but I wasn’t too worried, getting bags and things through airports in China was much easier than in the US, I remembered from my 2007 trip…

…au contrare, mon freir (sp?)…First, in checking my bags, the man would only let me check the large one, not both, because he showed me on the ticket where I had a 20Kg limit, and the bag was about that. I had been able to check both of them when flying from Luoyang to Kunming, so I was totally unprepared to be flatly denied. I thought I could pay more, or something. Finally, he indicated that I should carry it on…

Airport Security

OK, I thought, at least this won’t be as much of a hassle as I thought…oh, boy, was I wrong again…I suppose because of the Olympics, the security lines reminded me very much of the TSA lines in the US…but I wasn’t expecting to carry on the one bag. I had no idea what was in it. I also had a  backpack with a laptop inside, a camera bag and a jacket that had its pockets stuffed with odds and ends…I was as far from ready for a security check as I could possibly be…

So, needless to say, I got flagged to take off my shoes, all while having all my valuables stretched over half of creation after having gone on the X-ray security belt. I tried to put myself together after getting through that as best I could. In fact, everything was getting back to an even keel until we got on the airplane. I checked for my cell phone and couldn’t find it!!!

The only thing I could think of was that, as I was getting all my stuff from security, I missed the basked where I had placed my phone. I informed the stewardess and they let me off the plane to check with security. I thought this would just entail them calling a “lost and found” in security to see if they had gotten a cell phone in…but no…I had to go to the place where the screening was and ask them….while they were busy with a nonstop line of passengers to screen…all this while my plane was due to take off in 10 minutes…and in a foreign language, to boot!!!…

I thought it would be a small disaster if I lost my cell phone, though I could purchase another one and a sim card, this would take time and money and  I couldn’t let anyone know that I didn’t have it until I could send and email and…etc., etc.,…first, the security people after you give up your boarding pass kept my boarding pass to let me go look for the cell phone. The security person at the screening area wouldn’t talk to me, unless I showed him my boarding pass…go figure…so I ran back and they gave it to me…

now the security person at the screening area told me that they had my cell phone at gate 10. I asked, “they have it?” in Chinese, and she reiterated that “Yes, they have it.” I thought, this is very strange (as the gate for my plane was 35), but I ran through the airport like an old OJ Simpson Hertz commercial and got to gate 10…panting and out of breath, I tried to summon my best Chinese to explain to the boarding lady that she apparently had my shouji (cell phone)…she, of course, had no idea what I was talking about, and now there were 6 minutes until flight time…she made a call and told me it was Security gate 10, not Flight gate…and told me to go out and turn right…

So, I ran out and turned right and saw the security gates…thinking that I would be able to run to gate 10, grab my phone, dash to the plane and take off…only to find Security Gates 1-9…

…1-9…I checked again…oh, sh@t, I started to panic a little. I hurriedly asked the people at one of the security gates where security gate 10 was. One of the ladies calmly told me she would take me there. I showed her my boarding pass and showed her the departure time, which made her panic a little. We both double timed it through the airport, back to the original security screening area where I had asked about it in the first place. Five stalls away from the lady that told me to go to gate 10 was…you guessed it…Security Gate 10…damn…at this point, I was worn out and flustered, but happy that I would get my cell phone and not have to tell everyone that I lost another cell phone dealing with airplanes (as I had left one on an airplane in 2007).

Of course, this was not the end…gate 10 didn’t have any cell phone. I was told to have a seat in another gate, while several security people took my boarding pass and intently gazed at a screen about 40 feet away. I thought to myself, whatever happened to the good old lost and found. I would have thought if they had a cell phone, they could have figured it out without all the rigamarole. At the end of it all, they didn’t have it.

I got back on the flight, which they were holding for me, and profusely apologized to the passengers near me, now sweating up a storm and worried about having no cell phone, few RMB and no good plan.

I had two nice ladies from Annhui province who I talked with in Chinese during the flight. And things felt a little better (why worry about what you can’t do anything about?)…

Arriving in Nanjing

Well, when I got my checked bag, I found that I had put my belly bag in there and, yes, it had my cell phone in it. I made it to the hostel without too many issues, and had enough RMB to pay for it with about 350 left. I thought I would be able to find an ATM that would work in Nanjing and everything was working itself out.

That brings me up to Nanjing, which I will discuss in the next post.

Path leading to bridge over Lugu Hu

Along the way, these two girls were dressed up in traditional Musuo clothes and trying to sell apples. You would think that after all the trouble, they would be charging high prices, but they wanted 1Y (15 cents) for 3 apples. They were so cute. They reminded me of when I was selling worms I dug up in the back yard for a penny apiece, except they were cuter than I was!

Cute Musuo girls selling apples

After we got to the bridge, we paid for another boat ride. This time, we just went through the marsh area in the lake. This time, all of us (except Saad, who sat it out) went in one boat with these three rowing us:

Our Musuo "gondoliers" on the second day

At one place, the old gentleman got out and danced around on the marsh. We were all amused. He encouraged us to join him, so we all got out and did the “marsh hop”.

Dancing on the marsh

As you can see, we had a great time!

We all had a great time!

We then got back in the boat and went back to the bridge, where we ate some food being sold at the end.

A snack near the end of the tour

At the end of the tour, the driver dropped us off near our hostel, where we all walked around and took pictures (like the main one, above), then had a barbeque (the grill was in the middle of our table, sorry no pictures) dinner, which may have been what caused my discomfort…I’ll leave that for the next post.

My new friends in the other boat

The man was kind of lazy, though, and I ended up rowing a lot of the time on the way back…but after all this good Chinese food, I definitely need all the exercise I can get!

Row, row, row your boat...

We then visited the village head’s house and we were told (in Chinese, so that part didn’t do me much good) about the customs and culture of the Mosuo people. But seeing the housing arrangement was very interesting. It is similar to the old Chinese courtyard, with the matriarch living in a lodge type building and another side like a hotel, with different rooms for members of the clan that allow privacy for their “walking marriages”. The matriarch’s place has a fire inside with no chimney, but the way the log cabin structure is built, the smoke goes up and vents out the top. It’s interesting to have a fireplace inside with no chimney!

The next day, our Chinese friends arranged for us to be driven around the lake by a Mosuo lady…

Our Musuo driver for touring Lugu Hu

We stopped at some fun places, including a chairlift that started with a little go-cart type ride to the chairlift base. On the way down, the go-cart went down like a little bobsled (or I should say luge, I suppose, since “luge at lugu hu” sounds better), which was pretty cool!

Cool way to get to and from the base of the chairlift

Then, it was onto the chairlift to the main mountain overlooking the lake:

Chairlift to mountain overlooking Lugu Hu

At the top, you had to climb a lot of stairs, which winded many people, since Lugu Hu itself is 2685 meters (8800) feet above sea level and the chairlift definitely went up a long way from there.

When you got to the top, there was a surprise (at least to those of us whose Chinese isn’t the best)…there was a big cave to explore. Like everything else in China, rather it’s a mountain or anything else, if it’s meant for people to go on, they created stairs throughout the entire cave. Since I didn’t have a chance to visit other caves in China, this was a nice little bonus!

Cave in the mountain overlooking Lugu Hu

There were also some monkeys at the top of the chairlift, which added yet another element to the chairlift ride.

Monkey at the top of the chairlift

After the chairlift, we went to eat lunch at the driver’s family house, which started out with tea and snacks in the matriarch’s lodge…

Snacks before lunch in the matriarch's lodge

…then we had a lunch that included many Musuo dishes.
I will finish the day in another post to avoid making this one too long (as if that hasn’t already happened…)

There is no real marriage, in the Western sense of the word. If a woman and man love each other, the man sleeps with her at her house and leaves before morning. Children are raised in the mother’s family, with one of the older ladies assuming the role of head of the household (or clan, as it were, since households can become rather large). If either the woman or man decides to break off there relationship, there is no “divorce”, rather, they just stop the nightly arrangement. In addition, if the woman wants to, she can have boyfriends come over, too. This last part of their culture is apparently creating a tourist draw from men who think that they can cause a Mosuo woman to want them to be a boyfriend. It seems to me the only thing that would do is create a rather obnoxious group of tourists for the locals to deal with.

Anyway, I met a man named Saad (pronounced Sai-eed) in the Lijiang hostel and we went to Lugu Hu together. He has quite a story, as he left Iraq 29 years ago, when Sadaam Hussein was killing some of his friends and family members. He obtained asylum in Sweden and has been living there ever since. He now works as an interpreter. He is a nice man and is very considerate of others.

My friend, Saad

We caught the bus and met our other companions for the journey, three Chinese couples who were very nice.

Meeting new friends on the "bus"...

This gave us enough people to enjoy regular Chinese style meals, ordering a number of dishes and sharing them all.

Our group did things together, which was a lot of fun...

The road conditions on the way to the lake were horrendous…It was an 8 hour ride, with roughly half the trip on unfinished road (not dirt, but more like rough cobblestone). Many places were being worked on, which meant one lane was closed:

You don't want to be in a hurry on the road to Lugu Hu...

More traffic fun...

Of course, you never knew what you’d see on the road, which made it interesting:

Why did the pig cross the road?

Who needs a pasture?

Next post will be about our activities at Lugu Hu.

That said, here are a few of the delicious things I had in Lijiang…

One type of typical Chinese breakfast is long doughnuts and soy milk, which I enjoyed one morning:

Doughnuts and soy milk - a great way to start the day!

The next item is a pork dish recommended to my by the waiter when I said I wanted it very hot:

A spicy pork dish

The  dish at the top of the page is the best mapo dofu (a Sichuan style (hot and numbing)) dofu (tofu) dish that has pork in it, as well. This one had enough pork and the taste was soooo gooood! Also, I had some chrysanthemum tea, which Wendy at my work drinks. I hadn’t tried it before. It is very tasty and, to me, a little bit spicy.

Anyway, to wash down all this great food, what better to do it with than some Tibetan style yak butter tea? I didn’t know if I’d like this, or not, but one of my English students at the library where I volunteer (and a very good Chinese teacher, too!) told me that she drunk butter tea just inside Mongolia where she lived when she was in China. She continued that the Mongolians and Tibetans share similar roots and that the yak butter tea is one of the cultural traditions they have in common. To me, it tasted like English tea (which many take with milk/cream and sugar). Not bad at all!

Yak butter tea - good to the last drop!

By the way, for you photography buffs…Dennis…you may notice that after that one teapot with cool blurry background shot, I couldn’t resist trying it again this time.

From the timing, I don’t think any of these gave me a problem, in case you were speculating…next up, a trip to Lugu Lake…