sino journal five

Monday June 12th was a fairly easy day. In the morning, we went to the walled city of Old Dali. Dali is located at 6500 ft. between a mountain range and a large (20x6 mile) lake. It is right up against the mountains like Colorado Springs only these mountains are greener. VERY NICE. The buildings and streets are fairly new or recently rebuilt. Old style architecture, nice shops. Many streets are pedestrian only and made of granite blocks. Everything is landscaped perfectly. They have streams running channeled down the side of the streets. Very peaceful. Very soothing. This is like the nicest section of Lake Placid times 100. Perfect for the American Yuppie tourist and/or the occasional academic.

In the afternoon, we went on a boat ride across Lake Erhei to a poor fishing village. Not very remarkable for me since I have seen a lot worse in Africa and India.

Pictures of Dali

Our local tour guide is interesting. They paid her extra so she would not take us to tourist traps in order to get a cut of the sales. She told us yesterday that she would help us shop so we would not be cheated when we went into Old Dali. With her, some people paid from five to ten times as much as people did who bargained on their own. She told one woman that a piece was 99% silver when it was obviously silver plate.

Tuesday June 13th we went to a morning market in an ethnic Bai village. It was a real market and not a tourist spot. We also went to a tea ceremony that was extremely touristy. In the afternoon, we attended a lecture on the Bai people. This evening was free and we walked into the old city to eat. Very nice dinner and drinks for about $3. It was cool and breezy like the best of North Country evenings.

I went into an IP shop (internet phone) and called home. I was pretty tired and out of it. The owner spoke no English and wrote down the charge. I read rmb 264 and gave him three one-hundred bills. He waved me off then I realized it was rmb 26.4. He could have taken me and I would have never known. He obviously is not used to dealing with tourists. Those who are will rip you without hesitation.

Walked home and bought an ice cream or rather a fudge bar: rmb 1 or 12.5 cents.

I could get to like it here. It is so peaceful as well as user friendly to Westerners. The local university has a Mandarin immersion course. With tuition lodging, and food expenses it would cost less than $2000 per semester. Hmmmm.

I am the most quoted member of the group today. At a market, some people were buying smoking pipes and other artifacts that were obviously newly manufactured. The seller said it was from the Ching dynasty and I responded, “No, it is from the Ka-Ching Dynasty.”

We all agreed that the Ka-Ching Dynasty now rules China.

I asked a woman in our group who spoke a little Mandarin whether she overhead Chinese talking about us. She said yes but that most of the comments were about my height. I guess I am a couple or more standard deviations from the mean, height-wise.

Be blessed!
RB

sino journal follow-up

I wrote about visiting the late Chairman Mao in an earlier post. Just before you enter the building, people get out of line to buy flowers from a stand, go before a large marble statue of Mao inside the building, lay the roses down against hundreds of other bunches of roses, do a little honor/worship thing, and then get back in line. A colleague who had been there on a previous trip to Beijing said that every once in awhile workers will collect a large quantity of flowers previously presented to the statue, take them back to the stand, and resell them.

I wonder if the worshipers of Mao knew they were merely renting the flowers and not buying them?

I found out a bit more about Lucky Airlines mentioned in my most recent sino journal. This is a privately owned airline that flies to a few cities in China. The airline has only one plane, an aging Boeing 737, to fly to all its cities. I guess they have to be lucky. They have no backup if something goes wrong with the plane.

Be blessed!
RB

china pictures

I uploaded some pictures to webshots page #2. They are kind of random:

Beijing & Shanghai

Chengdu & Kunming

inebriated fish

Susan wins. Inebriated fish meant pickled fish. I trust you can see how that mistake could have been made.

sino journal four

Hello from Monday June 12th.

Saturday June 10th was a bit of a waste in terms of the faculty development seminar. We spent from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. traveling until we checked into a five-star hotel, the best in the city of Kunming. It is nice but a little excessive.

We had the evening off so I contacted another friend of Joshua’s and spent the evening with him. (It looks like the plans for my twelve-day extension are shaping up.) We went to an international coffee house he helps run and had dinner – a delicious Malaysian dish. I then visited his apartment and met his family. We then went to a teahouse for an “English Corner” where people go to practice their spoken English. I really had a lot of fun just visiting with people.

I brought a little photo album along with pictures of my family. (Of course, almost half of the photos are of the lovely and most beautiful Miss Lois.) This led to a real ego boost. People were shocked that someone as young as Mr. Robert could be a grandfather. One asked me how old I was and still could not believe it when I told them. I showed a picture of Sue and they were amazed that someone her age could look so young.

SUE, PLEASE DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH.
A lovely young women in her twenties exclaimed after seeing the picture of Sue, “She looks younger than me!” I assured the young lady that I had seen both and that she was definitely younger looking. Of course, I was merely being kind and diplomatic to the poor thing. (Did you really think Sue would skip over this section?)
THANK YOU SUE. YOU CAN BEGIN READING AGAIN.

My three sons are handsome and my three daughters are so beautiful. I had a picture of from K&K’s wedding where Kelly is standing up in the jeep in her wedding dress and wearing sunglasses. One young woman commented that it looked like something from a Hollywood movie.

Therefore, thanks to my photogenic family, I am quite a hit in this part of Yunnan Province.

Sunday June 11th was a long day. We went to the University of Yunnan and visited an absolutely outstanding and beautiful museum. It was thoroughly modern but still had a Chinese feeling. We then had two lectures on minority groups in SW China and then toured the campus. This university is even more beautiful than the one in Emei. We had a couple of hours free in the afternoon to wonder in part of a city, had dinner, and then a 10 p.m. flight to Dali.

I made the mistake of having laundry done in a 5-star hotel. I am used to everything being so cheap that I did not calculate the cost. For a half dozen pairs of socks, half dozen pairs of underwear, two shirts and a pair of khakis, the bill came to about $40. I could have bought the clothes here for that much.

Out flight to Dali from Kunming took only 40 minutes or so. This airport is so small that it closed before we had the bus loaded. I kid you not, we flew on Lucky Airline. This did not inspire confidence in my colleagues. Neither did the music we heard as we found our seats on the plane. I do not know the name of the song but it was from the movie Titanic. I am sure CIEE got a great fare.

We just got into the hotel in Dali. This is the nicest hotel yet, 5-star too, and has free internet where I can use SLU’s Virtual Private Network (VPN). This means no monitoring of my emails and activity in China. Plus, I can go the BBC and other websites for uncensored news (PRC blocks access western news sites). We will be here until Wednesday morning.

The director of the trip is letting us sleep in on Monday June 12th. Everyone is pretty wiped out.

Be blessed!
RB

sino journal three

Thursday morning June 8th the group went out to Sichuan University clear across town in Chengdu. I missed some lectures so I could meet with Tom’s friend from last summer, Joshua. We had a nice talk about what I could do in Chengdu for the last few days of my trip. For the afternoon, the group went to a panda research center outside of town where they have both the giant panda and the smaller red panda. The red panda looks something like a giant raccoon but is the color of a fox. A guide told us that the giant pandas do not know how to mate and must be taught. Therefore, they give them an apple to eat and turn on a big wide-screen TV so they can watch adult pandas copulating (panda porn?).

In they evening we went out to a Sichuan restaurant followed by a performance of a Sichuan opera. At the end of dinner, they had everyone try a toast with just a thimble of some very strong Chinese liquor. Everyone, that is except me. I had agreed in writing that I would not drink while in China. I would have liked to take part with the rest instead of looking like a Christian stick in the mud. I think most know I am a believer because on the plane to Chengdu I shared my testimony with my seatmate. He is a sociologist who teaches the sociology of religions and asked me how I became a Christian. (Please pray: I think behind the academic interest is a seeker’s heart.)

Friday June 9th we left for Mount Emei. This is a beautiful mountain with several Buddhist temples. Have you ever seen Chinese paintings of misty, craggy mountains? That what this area is like and one of the most beautiful in China. Some students from the local university joined us on our trek up the mountain. I talked with a young woman whose major was tourism management. She was from the capital city of a very poor province. Her hometown is “very small” and had a population of only one million. She bought and gave several of us a red necklace that is supposed to make us miss our wives or girl friends. (It works!)

Later that night a couple of us met with them again to tour the campus. It is one of the most beautiful campuses I have ever seen and certainly the loveliest in China. The young tourism major was very excited about getting an award. To both thank her and congratulate her, I gave her one of my copies of The Richest Man Who Ever Lived.

We also ate in our seminar leader’s favorite restaurant in China: The Teddy Bear. It is the best food I have ever eaten. I thought it was Chinese until I notice that a young Chinese woman assisting with the group did not care for it. Then I realized that this is a restaurant that catered to Western backpackers. Although the food was Americanized Chinese, it was far above the best Chinese food in the USA.

Tomorrow, Saturday June 10th, we leave early to take a plane to Kunming, Yunnan province. There I want to meet Aaron, who hails from Herkimer County, New York, and is a friend of Joshua’s. We hope to discuss my post seminar plans.

Be blessed!
RB

chinglish 2

Earlier I wrote about how I should not make fun of Chinglish. I have always been able to figure out what was trying to be communicated. However, in a Shanghai store I found an example that had me stumped. A package of vacuum-packed fish had on the label "inebriated fish." I would have never guessed its meaning unless one of my colleagues had figured it out.

What do you think it meant?

sino journal two

Sunday June 4th, I woke up early to go to the Great Wall. I wanted breakfast and more importantly, coffee. The nearest McDonald’s was closed at 6 a.m. so I went across the street to a 24-hour Chinese fast food place. I ordered coffee, an egg, and spring rolls. Food is really cheap here. McD’s food is relatively expensive but they have the deal on coffee. My coffee was as expensive as the whole Egg McMuffin meal. Now I have a new rationalization: I buy the coffee and McD’s throws in the food for free.

I was again jet-lagged, my foot was sore but now taped, and I was not prepared to deal with a guide (i.e., I wanted limited human interaction) so I checked my Lonely Planet guidebook (no pun intended) for how to get just a bus to the Wall. By 7 a.m., I was at the Beijing Bus Tour office next to Tiananmen Square. The prices were higher than the guidebook quoted but still reasonable. The bus was completely full and all Chinese except for four Pakistanis and me. Our tour guide spoke nothing but Chinese and she spoke that lot.

On the bus ride out of town I noticed again all the beautiful parks. I also noticed that the expressways have flowers and manicured shrubs and in the median and on the sides. I especially enjoyed the roses planted along the side of the highway. (Can you imagine downtown Syracuse with roses in bloom and other shrubs along the side of I-81?)

At the Wall, it was very touristy. I took pulley cars up rather than walk. These were like a small car that went up a roller coaster track. The walk on the Wall is steep and tiring. I am very glad I went early in the morning. Beijing is very hot and muggy this time of year and I was very glad I took an early bus.

On the way back, we stopped at Ming Tombs and some other nonscheduled stops where the guide got a cut of what people sent. I did hang out with the Pakistanis, an older man in his 70’s and three twenty-somethings, since I was over my anti-social attitude and they spoke English. The older man was very charming and funny. He had lived ten years in Beijing before, during, and after the Cultural Revolution. He had plenty of stories, all told with a wonderful sense of humor. However, it was obviously painful for him to recount some of the things he saw during the Cultural Revolution.

We had a coffee together during one of the longer unscheduled stops. After we had established a good relationship, the old guy set me up by asking about the Iraq War. I hesitated but then told why I thought our civilian leadership guaranteed the present debacle and why we could not just pull out. The younger guys were polite and asked questions but did not like what I said.

The older man later pulled me aside and spoke quietly to me, “This younger generation is so ‘romantic.’ They are not interested in facts.” Then I was sure the three were fundamentalists and that he wanted them to be exposed to an American viewpoint. I was used but it was for a good cause.

Monday June 5th was rather uneventful as I just traveled back to Shanghai. In the afternoon, I did walk over to another wonderful Chinese park/garden less than a block from the new hotel. There were basketball courts, very crowded, at one end, hidden by trees from the rest of the park.

Tuesday June 6th I went tto the park at 7 a.m. for some quiet time. Bad idea. The park was crowded with people exercising and even two groups of older women doing jazzercize. We had a briefing in the morning and met the other seminar participants. The afternoon was a bus tour of Shanghai. We also went to the observation level of the tallest building in China. Later we stopped at a classical Chinese garden in the oldest part of town.

There was one woman who I thought looked very familiar but I could not place her. Then I realized she looks very much like the mother on That 70’s Show. She even has some of the same mannerisms. She is a very neat person. 18 years ago, she spent a year in SW China and visited most of the places we will visit. Today she was sitting on a bench looking vacantly into the distance. I went over, sat next to her, and asked if she was in some sort of culture shock. She was. Nothing she remembers is here anymore. It is like a different country. The once quaint provincial capital, Chengdu, looks like just another big Asian city with skyscrapers

Today, Wednesday June 7th, we left the hotel at 5:30 a.m. to catch an early flight to Chengdu in Sichuan Province. We had a lunch banquet of Sichuan food. It is the spiciest and many think the tastiest food in China. One dish was memorable. It had chicken, peanuts, chopped onions and these little red raisin-like things. I ate a couple of the red things mostly because they were the easiest thing to pick up with chopsticks. Soon after my mouth was burning, I was in pain; I started sweating profusely. Then my ears started ringing.

The others at the table commented how brave I was to eat the dried peppers. (When they said this, they had very concerned looks on their faces.) They then told me that people are not supposed to eat the peppers, that even the locals do not eat them.

After awhile my ears stopped ringing, the pain subsided, as did the activity of my sweat glands. However, I had this mild sense of euphoria for a couple of hours afterward (post pepper buzz?) The rest of the afternoon was kind of cool even though I do not think we did anything worth remembering.

I did call a man Tom Story knew from last summer. I am to meeting tomorrow morning to discuss plans for a stay in Chengdu later this month.

I went out for a walk tonight. I love walking in cities. However, this place does look like just another big Asian city. However, I do not think I will ever get tired of Chinese parks and gardens.

Be blessed!
RB

chinglish

Many people like to read butchered English translations which are usually good for a laugh. There was a great example in the hotel I stayed in last Thursday in Shanghai. It was a notice or warning from the Shanghai police to beware of a certain scam victimizing tourists. I mean, word usage was weird.

I was about to copy it so I could email it home when the Lord brought me under conviction with a question, "Why is this funny?”

Anyone with a little effort would be able to figure out what the sign meant. Why did this make me laugh? Could it be that the“humor” allowed me to feel superior? Was I putting down someone else so I could I felt better about myself? Why laugh and put down someone"s good faith effort to help?

Here I am in a country where all I can say in their language is“thank you" and much of the time, I do not get that right. My table manners were never the best, but here I eat with chopsticks as if I were 18 months old and a palsy victim. People have been nothing but gracious and understanding, desiring to help me while I make buffoonish hand gestures.

And I am making fun of their English?

So, what did the sign say? I do not remember but I know what it meant. I know on a couple of levels.

sino journal one

The day before yesterday – both Wednesday May 31st and Thursday June 1st -- was extremely tiring. I left Syracuse Wednesday morning after three hours of sleep, and not a full night’s sleep for days before that. Since I wanted to get an emergency row seat for the Shanghai leg, very important for a 14½-hour flight, I rushed to get to the gate in Chicago. Found out the flight was delayed from 12:30 to 4:00. At 2:00, I hung out at the check in counter unit someone showed up and I was able to get an exit seat. Being tall helps. Always remember to stand up straight when requesting to sit in the emergency row. Especially when the clerk is barely over five feet in heels

United Airlines lost my luggage. How could they lose the luggage with an extra three and half hours in Chicago?

I stayed in a nice three-star hotel in the business district of Shanghai. Friday morning June 2nd Steve Robinson and I met with the man who runs the Shanghai program SLU uses. The program is in a nice part of downtown. Within a block of each other are the offices, classrooms, and student residences. They rent luxury four-bedroom, 2 bath with kitchen, apartments for the students. Very nice. The director said that they get the apartments cheaper per student than if they had to pay the local university for dorm rooms.

I was leaving for the airport and got the courage up to take the Metro (subway) rather than a cab. It turned out to be pretty simple. You buy tickets from a machine like in Washington, DC –English is an option. I had plenty of time so I got off the Metro at People's Park. Chinese parks are absolutely lovely. They are more like gardens with beautiful ornamental shrubbery, trees, and ponds. A work of art using landscaping; a beautiful and peaceful place to stroll or sit. Wonderful. Most in the park are older people reading or visiting. Occasionally in a quiet, more secluded spot, you'll find a young couple kissing on a bench. (Hey, where else can they go?)

I got back on the Metro and made the connection to the Maglev train. This train goes about 300 mph and takes only eight minutes to get to the airport. Did you ever try to put two magnets together the wrong way so they repel each other? That is the principle behind this train. It floats over the tracks. You don't feel like you are going 300 mph other than by watching the scenery whiz by. Very quiet. Very smooth. Very cool.

In Beijing, I'm staying at a no-frills two-star hotel a dozen blocks and a 10 rmb ($1.25) taxi ride (the minimum, taxi fare) from the Forbidden City. This is sort of a Chinese version of an Econolodge. AC, TV, sparsely furnished, no wall decorations, but it is functional. No one here speaks English. The clerk who checked me in had to show me numbers on a calculator so I knew how much to pay. The room also has a small, 4'x4’ bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower. No shower stall, the shower area is the bathroom. Different but it works.

I went for a walk in the evening just to look around, stock up on water and snacks, and maybe get some dinner. It started to rain so I was looking for a store and went into a drug store. Now, how would you ask for an umbrella? Think about it. I made a tent-like gesture over my head and then made a movement like opening an umbrella. The woman clerk got it, shook her head no, and pointed up the street.

I felt like a linguistic MacGiver. Who needs the language?

Now the store up the street had no language problem. They saw a foreigner walking in the rain, said “Umbrella?” and handed me one before I could see what was coming. BTW, a small collapsible umbrella is 10 rmb ($1.25).

Saturday June 3rd, this morning, I went out for breakfast and I went back to the drug store to get some athletic tape. (I have a lingering foot injury and should tape it if I am on it a lot.) How would you communicate athletic tape? How about tape? I couldn't figure it out. Now I knew they had something like it. I played charades with four young clerks at a time. They came close with bandages. One even tried elastic ankle wraps. I couldn't find them and gave up.

I guess I ain't no MacGiver.

I also did something I promised myself I'd never do. I had breakfast at McDonalds. Oh, the shame of it! I am the gauche American tourist rather than a serious academic undertaking a cross-cultural experience. I never do fast food abroad. (Starbucks in Hong Kong doesn't count.) I was tired of walking, I wanted something fast. I wanted something filling. I wanted something clean. Mostly, I wanted coffee. (In tea-drinking China, coffee is kind of iffy.) So I got the Egg McMuffin meal: 9.5 rmb ($1.19).

After breakfast, I walked to a five-star hotel to take a cab to see Mao's tomb. Now that I had lost my McGiver title, I thought at a five-star hotel all the bellmen would speak English. Sure, enough, the cab driver couldn't figure where I wanted to go and the bellman successfully intervened.

Mao's body lies in state in a colossal building at the south end of Tiananmen Square. There is a two-block line of people waiting to see him but I heard it moves fast. Basically, you walk at a slow pace rather than stand in line. I went up to the line and an older man asked me if I had a camera. He then led me away form the line and was trying to get me to cross the street to deposit my camera. Yeah, right. I figured out it was a scam where he’d take me out of the way and have a friend “hold” it for me. Who'd think that they'd have someone cross a 6-lane highway with no streetlight? China traffic goes by the survival of the fittest. The bigger vehicle has the right of way. Bicycles don't even stop for pedestrians.

I got within a hundred yards of the building when an army private pulls me out of the line, passes a metal detector wand over me, and discovers a camera in my pocket in its case. He then uses his complete English vocabulary, “No!” and points to the back of the line a couple of blocks back. So I had to walk back, every one knows why the dumb foreigner is walking back. I then cross six lanes of traffic and pay a small fee to have my camera stored.

I did get in to see Mao. He's still dead.

This is a good thing. He is responsible for more deaths and human suffering than Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, and Saddam Hussein combined. Despite this, many Chinese, particularly in this part of the country, worship him. 99.9% of those in line to see him were Chinese.

I spent the rest of the day at the Forbidden City. This palace complex at the other end of Tiananmen Square is about two-thirds of a mile long and about ¼ of a mile wide. I rented an audio guide player instead of hiring a guide. I was jet-lagged, my foot hurt, I wanted to take my time, rest when I wanted, and not have to put up with a human being. Sometimes machines are just easier.

I can't really describe it. It is much bigger than I expected. The audio guide had an electronic map that let you know where you were and had lights for all the sights. It also kept track of where you have been. Very helpful in a place that big. Building and exhibits were impressive but my favorite part was the imperial garden.

The hotel staff did something very sweet while I was gone. Hotels in China always have these disposable slippers to wear in the room. They are made out of a sort of very thin stryofoam material. With no luggage and therefore no shower shoes, I wore a pair in the shower and then threw them in the trash. Today when I came back to my room, in addition to the usual slippers, there were pair of new sandals, basically a nice pair of rubber slides for me to use as shower shoes. This was really thoughtful, especially considering how little I’m paying for this room. I know how to say thank you in Mandarin, but how do I let them know what I'm thanking them for?

This evening my luggage arrived! After three days, I can change my underwear. This is a good thing. It was wonderful to shave and wear clean clothes.

Be blessed!
RB