final tally

so using my trusty memory, i kept track of all the laowai i met over the time of my trip. interestingly enough, americans came in the lead with an astonishing 14. even more interesting is that i did not meet an american until the last leg of my trip in guilin. the next runners-up were the germans with an amazing showing of 12. third were the english with 8. the rest of the totals were as follows:

scots: 2
canadian: 7
swiss: 1
dutch: 1
indian: 2
french: 2
kiwis: 2
italian: 1
danish: 2
brazilian: 1
irish: 1
israeli: 2
belgian: 1
czech: 2
australian: 2

yangshuo

after a somewhat disappointing beginning to spring festival, things picked up yesterday. taking a boat down the li river, from guilin to yangshuo, i was able to see some of the most spectacular scenery this country has to offer.

yangshuo is a pretty interesting place. a small town with a huge tourist industry, yangshuo is a haven for both chinese and western tourists alike. there are a few streets packed with hostels and cafes, as well as tourists. for me, seeing so many westerners makes me feel a bit self-conscious. luckily, by walking a few thousand meters northeast, i was able to find myself back in china, where i felt much more comfortable.

i spent the whole day exploring. in yangshuo there's book exchanges in the cafes, so i set out with two highly valued books--both literately and monetarily--and set out to find a few good books. the first place had a big sign advertising books for sale, selling, and trading. i stopped there, and it was stocked to the gills with books, but mostly airport novels. i set out from there, hoping to find cafe too, the place my rough guide said had by far the best selection. after three hours meticulously combing the tourist part of town, i gave up and headed back to the first place to settle. this time, checking above the shopfront. sure enough...cafe too. i should have seen it coming. i found a copy of absalom, absalom by faulkner, and because of stupid rules, i had to trade two great books for it. i just hope the travelers who get my books appreciate my sacrifice.

last night, the streets were packed with people...i'm wondering if guilin might have been similar had it not been raining. dragons were running around, beating at doors of shops, hostels and restaurants, demanding sacrifice. the shopkeepers would hang a offering out the second-story window, with a red envelope surreptitiously attached. a human pyramid is built, and the dragon climbs up and eats the offering. everyone claps, and the store gets a bit of publicity. what a wonderful tradition.

so i'll be chilling here and in guilin for the rest of my trip, so unless something wicked cool happens, i'll update next from chengdu.

pictures

when i get back on the 24th, i plan to update all my previous posts with pictures, so be sure to check back.

i believe the word i'm looking for is...

cacophony.

all day i've been walking through the mountains or hills or pillars of karst in guilin, astounded by the beauty of these crazy rock formations. every so often, with increasing frequency, my wonder would be interrupted by what sounded like machine-gunfire.

today, just now in fact, the chinese calendar has turned to the year of the pig. pretty fitting for a mcswiney. that has meant an abundance of firecrackers going off during the day, culminating in a huge fireworks display at midnight.

as opposed to the us, where each city has one concentrated show, chinese citizens take matters into their own hands. throughout the day, i would see boys lighting single firecrackers and throwing them into the streets. people would light strings of firecrackers from balconies, and fireworks were for sale everywhere.

at about 11:45 tonight, things reached a crescendo. as i sat inside my hostel avoiding the rain with my fellow travelers/english teachers, thousand of firecrackers seemed to all go off at once. we couldn't hear ourselves talk over the din. i went outside, and there were fireworks all around me. i found a place near some shorter buildings, plugged my ears, and watch the show erupt around me.

after a few minutes of spectating, the neighborhood i am staying at got into the mix, and fireworks began to go off directly over my head. i love how china has no worries about health and safety. luckily, it was rainy, so nothing was gonna catch on fire.

i took as many pictures as i could, but i soon realized that if i was going to try wait until the fireworks were over, i wouldn't get any sleep. so i came here and blogged instead.

happy new year!
xin nian kuai le!

stupid fly by your seat travelling

so i've kinda painted myself into a corner over here. my plan was this--take a bus to chongqing, take a boat to wuhan, take a hard sleeper to guilin, take another hard sleeper to kunming, and then a bus back to chengdu. nevermind it's chinese new year, the equivalent of thanksgiving and christmas combined in terms of chinese traveling. needless to say, i was unable to get a hard sleeper. i instead got a hard seat...and not even that. each ticket can either have seat number on it, or not. my did not since i bought it the day of. i did a lot of standing during my second-hand-smoke-filled 14 hours.

this put me at guilin at 5:30 this morning. as i waited for my hostel to open at seven, i planned my next move. opening up my tour book, i quickly learned that not only is kunming 22 hours away by train, but i had isolated myself from chengdu by about 40 hours of trains.

now, i'm gonna refer you to the quote in the upper-right hand corner of this blog--and boy am i having an adventure.

i'm gonna see what happens, but i think i may fall back onto a plane ticket...hopefully they're pretty cheap.

but i'm valuing the experience, and i'm sure my outlook will brighten with a bit more sleep and a great chinese new year celebration. it better.

wuhan

just arrived in wuhan. the gorges were nice, the small gorges were cool, but the smaller gorges were the best. each set we took a smaller boat into the water. finally we were in a traditional boat, albeit powered by a motor, being sung to by our two chinese guides.

on the boat i formed a laowai posse of 2 canadians, 2 germans, a brit, swiss, and dutch. it was nice to be the only american. after the boat trip we disembarked and took a bus to see three gorges dam. it was big. we stopped what seemed like 8 different places. we thought we might dig under so we could see the dam from the bottom.

then the germans and i took a bus to wuhan, me sleeping all the way. after rain, a few cabs, and one illiterate cab driver, we made it to the hostel and safety.

so that's where i'm at. check ya later.

yangzi madness

yo--i'm just chillin' out, maxin, relaxin outside of the yangzi, and my boat leaves in about 15 minutes. this is just a quick note to let everyone see how determined i am about this blog. i'm sitting in an internet cafe next to a 12 year old world of warcraft player. he seems to be kicking butt. this trip is doing the same to me. i am quickly realizing that i took chengdu for granted as a big city. i'm getting a lot more "laowai" (old foreigner) and a lot less english. a fair trade if you ask me.

i'm taking some great pictures, but no way to upload them yet...just you wait.

ahhhh...jet lag

i woke up this morning at an early 6:00, and brought myself to roll, stretch, and crush pillows until 7:30. at that point i woke up and went in search of my favorite chinese breakfast--bao zi. where i live is definitely a college town (or high school town, for that matter), and most of the businesses are closed leaving only a single food vendor on my usual street. he was serving a fried doughnut type pastry, but it wasn't quite what i was looking for.

a few blocks to the north of my school, the high-tech industry flourishes. (hence the quaint town name "High Tech Zone (West)") while schools go on vacation for chinese new year, the armies of workers that power the high-tech industry decidedly do not. so as an army travels on its stomach, i went north and found a good sized group of vendors selling breakfast. bao-zi, however, they were not. deep sigh there, folks.

i was quickly over my disappointment, and grabbed a few delicacies: ma er bi--red bean paste (i think) inside a soft dough, and another stuffed breakfast where a round flat bun is sliced open with a boxcutter (at least the woman did here) and stuffed with a mixture of beef, cilantro, chives, as well as some pickled carrot. i also picked up some warm soy milk (duojia) to wash it down.

now it was not exactly what i was looking for, but it hit the spot.

and looking at the nest of plastic bags my food sits in, it is clear that the chinese do not grasp how dangerous a throwaway economy is for our planet. do you?

the quick changes of china

i thought this first blog back would be about the striking similarities and differences between china and the us. that was before i got back and realized how quickly china moves.

it's like when you haven't seen your niece in two weeks, and suddenly she's taller than you, and dunking in your face. (sheila and i always play basketball when i visit.)

first off, there is new major construction on renmin nan lu (south peoples' road). this is not too surprising, as there is construction happening everywhere at all times.

near my school where there was once a giant parking lot about the size of 4 football fields side to side is now a dirt pile laden construction site. between my school and the parking lot, there is a river.

that river is awful. full of trash, the water trickles past, giving the chemicals from all the useless packaging plenty of time to seep into the near stagnant flow. the grayish brown "water" releases such a stench that i used to hold my breath as i walked by. for the past few weeks before i left, the municipal government had been taking care of this environmental problem the chinese way--by building over it. i left as they had finished laying the bricks for a building directly over the river. when i returned, there was a store in it, chock full of goods, and of course, with the requisite pedicab drivers lounging about outside.

the most pleasant change greeted me this morning as i left to stake out some breakfast...the trees outside my building were blooming with gorgeous pink blossoms. i'm gonna say it again...thank god for global warming. the bees did their business as i stood in the sun and watched, slowly filling with peace. it's weird, but it's good to be back home in china.

my apologies

so there was an earthquake in taiwan which disrupted china's international internet feed. then i got really sick. then i went home. these things combine to cover my lack of motivation to keep the blog going for the past month. to my faithful readers, i apologize.

but things are different now. i am reenergized, i have a bunch of chinese new year resolutions, and i am chompin' at the bit. get ready for a little of old school philosophizing from trees.

just not now. it's 3 o'clock in the morning and i've been traveling for about 22 hours.