I'm traveling faster that I can post!!

getting into Wuhan was like seeing a completely different sort of China. While Hong Kong is shiny and urbane and condensed, and Shanghai is schizophrenically expanding and dirty and shiny, Wuhan is a big messy sprawling city where the propaganda attempts to stop people from spitting anywhere that is convenient and little babies from pooping in the streets haven't reached. It is a city that has shiny tall buildings and renao bustling nightmarkets as well as dirty tunnels and street food and the most bewildering confusion of smells. It is an entirely fascinating city, without any kind of pretense or apology for what it is. It is not a clean city, but I liked it very much nevertheless

My first day there Issac took me to see his favorite noodle place, where they hand-make the noodles right there in front of you. this process seriously looks like magic, I went back there for breakfast every day just to watch them pull my noodles. Wuhan is near to Hunan province (which is known for it's mouth blistering spice), so the food there has some sizzle to it. It's the sly kind though, a red oil that builds up over time as you eat it, and sneaks up on you from the other end the day after you've eaten it. For all that, the food is terrific, and I got used to the amount of spice fairly quickly.

I had a fairly mellow time in Wuhan, wandering around seeing Issac's neighborhood, going to see the east lake where dozens of soon to be brides come every day to take wedding pictures with their future groom in silly costumes. I saw so much lace and silly hats it was fantastic!

My friend Issac (whom I was there visiting) is currently teaching English to elementary kids. I got to go with him to see the classroom and what teaching English in China is all about, which is pretty cool considering it is something that I am thinking about doing next year. He has a first grade class, two second grade classes and a fourth grade class. I showed up the first day and was mobbed by small adorable Chinese children. After class on the first day they all came up to me with questions wanting to hug and cuddle and sit on the wai guo ren (white or foreign person)'s lap. So many kids piled on me at once with such exuberance that I ended up having to grab the white board in a desperate (but ultimately unsuccessful) attempt not to fall on top of the children who were hugging my knees from behind. We all ended up going down in a pile of limbs, and needless to say became fast friends. I came away from the experience that teaching little kids is a lot like herding hyper intelligent cats: both incredibly fun, but exhausting. I totally want to do it.

While I was there, one of Issac's friends and co teachers had a birthday, so we all got on a van/bus thing and drove a couple of hours to a hot springs where we spent all day lounging in the warm water scented with everything from beer, coffee, red wine, milk, chrysanthemum, ginkgo, rose, lavender, to soup. One of them had me smelling a lot like chicken soup. All of them made me feel very relaxed and soft. They had slightly more involved baths as well where you could sit and have little fishes nibble the dead skin off of your body, or be buried in warm sand, or massaged with hot stones. As all of these cost extra, I stuck to the beer baths and the massaging high powered super heated showers and the water massage chairs. Such a good weekend.

More non-sequiter,while I was there Issac's mop of hair got to be out of control. I went with him to get it cut (I really enjoy haircuts, both having mine cut, and watching the transformation. for some reason it fascinates me) While I was there one of the hairdressers had an incredibly cute haircut, one that was pretty much the haircut I've had in mind for a while. I mentioned this to Issac and he encouraged me to go for it. With much gesticulation and broken Chinese, I let them have a go at my hair. The woman washing it must have taken 30 minutes on the shampoo alone, trying to small talk in Chinese is no easy chore. My head ended up thoroughly massaged and cleansed. The man cutting it was the most meticulous hairdresser I have ever seen, cutting it and reexamining it and blow drying it and reexamining it and tripping here and shaping there. The end result was spectacular. As Nicole said when I came home : now you look all urban, like the quirky cute best friend in a hip sitcom! I think it looks rather fetching, and I must say I am totally happy with it. I'll post pictures asap, but I feel VERY ute at the moment, and am so happy that I made that particularly impulsive choice.

After Wuhan I took a train to Guilin (bought the tickets in Chinese all on my own!!!!) and from there took a riverboat down the Li river to Yangshuo. Yangshuo is a rural tourist town snuggled in between gumdrop fairytale mountains that I never really believed existed outside of Chinese scroll paintings. They're real. Taking the boat down the Li, these gumdrops float at you out o the fog, exploding into rolling peaks of this intense green. Going from the gagging pollution of Wuhan, the purity of the air was enchanting. In addition, there are hawkers (yes, even in the middle of a river in a rural idyllic area of china) who sidle up to the riverboat on rafts made of about 4 large pieces of bamboo and try through the glass window of the 3 storey tour boat to sell you jade Buddhas and enormous painted fans. These people have some serious commitment. There are also others more gainfully employed on the river who fish all day and bring their loads of river crabs and fish to rear kitchen on the boats as they go down the river, where the catch is fried up and served about 20 minutes later. In case you're wondering, deep friend river crab isn't bad...kind of like eating chips but a little...fishier. Mostly very crunchy though. They also offered us another delicacy from the region on the boat: snake wine. This is pretty much a rice wine with the same alcohol content as vodka with - and I kid you not - a snake fermenting in the jar with the alcohol. A friend of mine got a cup, and I took a sip from it...it was...snakey. And to be honest entirely rank...but a good story...

In Yangshuo I joined up with a tour group that was pretty small and mostly french (only french people I met the whole trip...mostly there were dutch or brits), and went on a bamboo raft to a pretty area outside of Yangshuo and watched cormorant fishing. They basically take Cormorants, tie a string around their throat and set them out to try to eat a fish. The fish will get stick in their long throat above the string, and the fisherman will pull it out, and throw them back out to do it again. It apparently takes about two years to train a cormorant to do this. It seemed a little cruel to me, but does look very cool, and apparently is now done mostly for tourism. On the raft there was also a traditional Chinese singer dressed up in a very silly hat with the traditional style clothing of one of the "minority peoples" that are in that area. I am still unclear as to what exactly this minority people is exactly, but she sang some very cool songs and had really cool clothing. She was quite sweet. After that we got to feed and pet a water buffalo who was very cute and kind of smelly and dopey.

At the end of my stay in Yangshuo I got onto a sleeper bus and headed off to Shenzhen to get back to HongKong for my flight back to Taipei. This sleeper bus was both hilarious and deeply uncomfortable. Imagine if you will, 39 beds organized into three rows with each row comprised on upper and lower bunks, squished onto a normal sized bus:

The "beds" are built for a person about my weight, and about 5 inches shorter than me. Now to those of you who are fuzzy my actual dimensions, I am 5'3". This makes me marginally taller than most Chinese women. This bus is built for midgets. The head room is non existent (you can just barely sit up) and your feet are slid into a metal box about the width of my shoulders that slopes downward as it is also the pillow/backrest part of the "bed" in front of it. I hope this is making some kind of sense. Add to this that traffic in China doesn't include any kind of laws, and you're in for an exciting night. The strategy I discovered was to wrap the thick blanket they provided around your lower body between the metal edges of the foot-box and the railing that was at about hip level so that when you inevitably slammed into the many metal part of the bed and / or the window as the bus screeched to stops or sped around corners, you would thud rather than bruise. It was kind of horrendous in the amazing exhilarating way that only traveling can bring, and while I'm definitely happy that I had the experience, it is not one that I am in a hurry to repeat.

I got into shenzhen at about 8 in the morning, having slept for about 3 consecutive hours during the 13 hour bus ride and got to pantomime with my broken Chinese, to figure out where the bus to take me into the boarder crossing to Hong Kong left from. I ended up playing travel by zen, armed with a bus number and a phrase which I translated (correctly as it turned out) to mean opposite. Playing travel by zen is when you follow the nearest group of people similarly armed with suitcases who like like they're probably going the same place you are. This led me up over a pedestrian overpass to a bus stop and onto the number seven bus, safely to the boarder crossing where I got into Hong Kong and back to the English speaking territory without a hitch. I think my Chinese might be better than I give it credit for, I just tend to worry that I'm translating things wrong, but so far all of the train, bus tickets and directions I've gotten have been entirely successful.

Anyways, I am now home, and in Taipei, and while I enjoyed my travels and adventures thoroughly (and they are far from being over) it is nice to be back in my home away from home, among family in a neighborhood that I know.

Okay, so shanghai part two.

The hostel I was in for the first night filled up so I left early in the morning to meet Wang Yan (a friend of sean and nicole's) with everything I came with on my back (to be fair, this is my normal school backpack full to bursting and a purse). She insisted on me coming home to stay with her and her family, which turned out to be the most amazing plan ever. We saw the painting and jade exhibits in the Shanghai museum, stood in line for almost an hour to eat the most famous Xiaolunbao in Shanghai at the yuyuan gardens (which in my opinion were inferior to the awesome xiaolunbao place by our house in taibei, to say nothing of ding tai fun), looked at a whole lot of cool architecture and chatted a lot. She told me a ton about the history of the city, and about the context in which the paiting exhibits existed in. Traveling through Shanghai with a scholar who was born there is a fantastic experience, I highly recommend it. 

Shanghai is in the midst currently of cleaning itself up in time for the world expo, so everything is in the process of being cleaned or torn up an rebuilt. In addition there are little propaganda signs everywhere trying to convince people not to spit any and everywhere that they like, or to shove people out of the way and cut in lines, especially around the subway ticket booth, good luck! Seeing these teeny little grammas elbowing past you is a fairly common sight.

Another completely random factoid about shanghai: it's known for having some of the best dressed girls in china, which as far as I can see is entirely true. Fashion is a big thing there, and everyone dresses to a T, very fashionable and cute...with me in smelly traveling gear I felt a bit outclassed, but I took notes, they have some very cute ideas. I was also totally impressed to the amount of walking that these women can do in teensy high heels! I prefer my hiking shoes thanks..they may not be too stylish, but they're a whole lot more comfortable. I took a walk down  their shopping district my first night there, it is a blaze of neon and shops, kind of like Kowloon in Hong Kong, but more condensed.

Anyways, I got to meet Wang Yan's family, play with her adorable and feisty little girl YueYue and meet Wang Yan's husband. They fed me full to bursting on really good shanghainese food, and before putting me on a train Wang Yan's husband made me dumplings, mmmm. So tasty. I then climbed into another little 6 bunks to a room train and slept until we reached Wuhan. More on that later. 

To pick up from where I left off, the train was incredible. I went in with an open mind, but I certainly wasn't expecting that kind of luxury!! Think lacy gently wafting curtains and individual tv screens...wow. It turns out that they shuffled rooms around because they don't like people having a quad room to themselves, so I ended up bunking with a really great swiss guy, George and a Spanish guy, Luis. We spent a ton of time comparing who things are in our parts of the world, and how we have found china to be thus far. I sent them off with the suggestion of finding xiao lun bao in Shanghai, as both of them had been fairly unimpressed with chinese food thus far, sad times.

Shanghai itself is an interesting city. I got to see it from two polar opposites. The first day I found a tiny ship themed hostel right by the Bund. This hostel was hilarious. The front desk was covered with massive ropes ties in sailing knots, and the dorm beds I stayed in looked like ship bunks, complete with portholes. It was pretty goofy. The first day there I walked along the Bund, a stretch of buildings along the HuangPu river that divides Shanghai in half. The side of the Bund I was on is the old side, colonial buildings that go back to the turn of the century and which used to be the british and american embassies in Shanghai. At the moment the entire city and especially the Bund is  one big construction site, as Shanghai is slated to host the world Expo in 2010. If you look across the rover, you can see Pudong, a skyline of highrises, all of which have been built within the last 20 years, most of them in the last 5. When I post pictures of this skyline you'll understand the jaw-dropping insanity of this fact. The skyline is packed. It's shiny. It's huge. And it's all younger than I am. Younger than Avary! It's just insane the rate at which this country is expanding. 

After wandering along the riverside I took Sean's advise and went down the Bund Sightseeing tunnel, which has very little to do with sightseeing but a whole lot to do with flashing lights and goofy voice-overs. You enter a little plexiglass buggy that looks as though it belongs in Disneyland and it takes you down a tunnel with spiraling LEDs lighting up the darkness around you. As you go along the tunnel the colors and designs of the lights change as the voice overs inform you that you are entering through "meteorites...nascent lava....paradise and hell" It is just too cheezeball-wonderful for words. This tunnel runs beneath the river and takes out out into the midst of these silly looking buildings, including the Pearl, a giant tripod topped with a ball hovering over two domes and a museum that gives the whole thing the appearance of a colossal penis watching over Shanghai. It's just so goofy and wonderful.

I am now completely starving, so I'm going to go out and explore Wuhan and grab some niuromien, but I'll catch up on the posting soon, promise :)

Hello from HongKong!

I've been here for three days, and I'm just about to head out again...the only thing keeping me from being sad is how much I'm looking forward to Shanghai, and the fact that I'll be back here in a week and a half! This city is amazing. It is friendly and crowded and BIG and shiny with great food. I seem to have a knack for ordering the wrong thing (too many different words for shrimp, all of which equal a very ill me) but even then, it's incredibly tasty.

The city itself is split up into two areas, Kowloon (where I'm sleeping in a shoebox with no windows....but the security is great and the price is right! Plus, some fantastic Indian food downstairs) and Hong Kong island. There are a couple of others too (lamma and lantras) but the city itself is concentrated in those two areas. 6 million people in an area I can walk through in about a half hour. Yeah...it's wild. It's tall. The skyline from Kowloon is simple incredible, I just don't have words for how it feels to be completely surrounded by buildings this big all of the time. This puts pretty much every other major american city to shame in terms of sheer concentrated enormity. And then you decide to go up to Victoria peak, and lo and behold there is dirt again, and trees and nature. It's just...wow.

You can find anything and everything here. The world's longest escalator? Check. It just keeps going somewhere upward of four city blocks...I actually lost count, and it extends halfway up a mountain. Tucked underneath there are shops and restaurants and bars of all kinds... Authentic russian offering free vodka to anyone who shows up and orders something between 8 and 10, next door Lebanese with some seriously tasty hookah and the owner who hangs out at the bar and chats with his customers. I had a moment of inner hilarity when he asked me what color the stripes on his shirt were, amusingly close to the color of the Rainbow building in taipei on monday nights...fuchsia? Red? It's a question for the ages. (I told him Fuchsia :P)


Anyways, my internet time is about to run out, so I will run along. Think of me packed into a four person train carriage tomorrow, reading 100 years of solitude in a teeny upper bunk,. I'm actually looking forwards to lazing about after all of this walking up and down the steps of SoHo!

It's times like this that I wish I had an illuminated keyboard (mental note - get money and buy a prettypretty macbook pro...) I'm wishing this as a result of insomnia...for those of you who are familiar with my sleep patterns, you'll know that I pass out at the drop of a hat usually. A hard time falling asleep means that I've had the time to think "gee, I'm never going to fall asl-" before becoming entirely immobile. Unfortunately, either caffeine (which I usually drink a very moderate amount of) or hard exercise late in the day can cause this kind of peppyness. Today, I carried Ingrid up the mountain. Enough said.

The mountain. To explain, the area of Taibei that I live in (as I've said) is an older part. You walk down the winding back alleys (some of which lead to nowhere) and you'll see laundry hanging off of any area which might catch a breeze (it's well-neigh impossible to get things dry here. The best you can hope for after a full day of hanging is a kind of clammy stiffness. It's actually kind of charming, and a damp sort of way). You'll see endless manga shops and haircutting salons (I saw one named "Chia hair" today that made me smile), holes in the wall selling house paint, yarn for knitting, really anything you could imagine anyone needing. But where was I again? Right, the mountain.

Anyways, you walk through these amazing back alleys (which I will try to do justice to later) and all of a sudden you see a wall, with a mountain covered in green rising behind it. This isn't a big wall, nothing "great" or "china"-y about it. just a simple wall with gardens set behind it, and clotheslines, the usual sorts of things one sees behind walls. Then you come to a series of temples. The first one is big and run down, the paint peeling and faded. The second - like everything else in our part of the city - is covered by corrugated plastic layered into a ceiling. You walk up the stairs and you see two rows of gods, sitting there at the base of their mountain. There are offerings of incense always burning, a kettle of tea and some glasses set beside a couch and chairs (vinyl so they don't get mouldy) and beyond that, another set of stairs. These wind up through a temperate rain forest, slowly at first, then sharply, with a hand railing to help those who find the unevenness of these stairs slightly unnerving given the space between you and the road below. This is the mountain that I have been slowly training myself to run up every other day. Granted, I can't do a full out run up yet, I still need to stop at intervals. However the views are so beautiful, and the altitude increases rapidly enough that I'm perfectly OK with my set rest areas.

At the top of the first plateau, you can see the city below you (often set into clouds that look like fog. from below at the city's eye-level you can't see anything. It's just that humid.) and 101 (the rainbow building as Ingrid likes to call it) rising up far above you. This is (or was?) the tallest building in the world. Most importantly (if you are a 2 year old) it lights up every night, with bands of neon color that change depending on what day of the week it is. It also explodes with fireworks on new years) You might see anything on this hike up, continuing toward that top of the summit. Little old men trotting past in their bare feet, whole retirement-communities laboring up to the first pass every friday afternoon, families in polo shirts with cameras and hiking poles (the entire mountain is stairs btw. No dirt trails here, it's all rock steps) laughing at the crazy white girl who is running up the freeking mountain.

It gets better when I have Ingrid on my back in the backpack. Cause then, I have the child-star of Taibei with me on my back. Now, not only is it odd to see such a beautiful blonde child going up the mountain, but seeing a young woman carrying her? Now that's just crazy-talk! I get a lot of thumbs ups, and chuckles. A couple people have taken our pictures. It's pretty funny. I have also decided that outside of pregnancy I am NOT going to spontaneously gain about 20 pounds overnight. Cause carrying that around is hard work. I have also decided to train prior to and during pregnancy so that when the time comes to carry around a baby every second of the day for the following 5+ years, I will be ready, and not die. Moral: Children are heavy, the end.

I was going to talk more about the city and some of the awesome people who run these teeny shops and feed me the best food ever, but I'm kind of tired now, which was the goal. So I will save it for another more awake time of day.

zaijian, byebye.

It's the little things:

I love that my bed is always rearranged - usually with hugabear on top of the covers and my alarm clock hidden somewhere - from the way it was when I got up in the morning. Suspiciously small foot-indents in the covers lead me to believe that the culprit is of a rambunctious size, charming, and blonde.

It cracks me up that my alarm clock has become a telephone that Ingrid can make international calls on.

It amazes me that there is a mountain out my backyard. And that I am beginning to learn how to run up it.

I also enjoy the teeny old men that are beating me up ad down the mountain. In bare feet. In the rain.

I have become personally attached to the god of that mountain area. I bow every time I go past and thank him. He (they?) sit at the base of the mountain, under a rain cover where it is always warm and dry, and they are always shiny, golden and smiling. It's a good afterlife.

The fashion here. Oh my goodness, I feel like I should have my camera out and on every second of every day. Yesterday I saw a girl wearing a panda hat. (They got pandas in at the Taibei zoo, and every day they sell out of tickets by about 2 pm. During New years the zoo was filled to capacity. Every day. There were lines to get into not just the panda area, but the zoo itself.) Today I saw the guy who dresses up as a native outside the shmancy shopping mall district, dancing to "hey mickey". This alone would have been good for a little giggle. But the fact that he was wearing a fringe loincloth...and nothing else....well that was just beyond awesome. Down the walkway about two meters a man was casually strolling around with a bunny dressed up as Speed Racer - complete with a little vinyl helmet and coat - on his shoulder as he looked at straw art (as in you drink things through them), and the living statues. Oh yeah, this place is just COOL.

Multiple times a day, I get to eat wonderful things. In case you were wondering, pineapple juice and kiwi blended is pretty tasty. A little seedy and chunky though, and a very suspicious shade of green...

Multiple times a day, I also get to do things like dance around the room twirling a two year old in a quasi-waltz, while singing "tiny bubbles" or "the prince philip song" from sleeping beauty, wearing anything from my enormous electric blue sunglasses, to a sun hat or electric pink boa that I think has the face of a sheep or goat on one end. I also get to write incredible run-ons

basically, my life here is pretty cool. more specific sensory details to come...*wave*

I'm reading Billy Collins' collection of poetry called "nine Horses" right now, and I've fallen in love with this poem:

Aimless Love

"This morning I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor's window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door -
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor -
just a twinge every now and then

For the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed up in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripos,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone."

~Billy Collins~

Just thought I'd share the beauty, simplicity, and humor.
:)

We got back from visiting the sunny south about four day's ago, so I'm back in Taibei trying to figure out my way around.

We took the highspeed rail down south, taking us from Taibei to Gaoxiang (the equivalence of Seattle WA to Salem OR) in an hour and a half. I want one. We then took the subways and bus down to Kenting and into our little compound.

We stayed at a fujienese style compund that looked out over a cliff to the ocean.
The buildings were set up with multiple rooms arranged around different styles of shared courtyards. The details on the roofs were just beautiful. This kind of pointy roof was apparently made for VIPs.

We spent a lot of time on the beach, swimming and dipping our feet in the warm water and enjoying the sun. At night, the markets come out and the streets filled with people selling things everywhere! I learned quite a lot about Cho Dofu, pretty much the stikiest thing ever. The smell of this tofu frying smells like old full diapers and will follow you down the street, no joke. We ran to try to avoid the Cho fairly often in Kenting.

We rode the bus back up to Gaoxiang after a couple of days and walked aroun the river and looked at all of the lights. The city is being rebuilt for the 2009 world games so there are cute little light-up avatars everywhere doing jujitsu or rugby to prepare for the games, it's pretty funny.


Then home again to Taibei.

We climbed a mountain yesterday that was pretty awesome and sits about a 5 minute walk out our front door. Me and that mountain will be seeing a lot of eachother in the next few months I am fairly certain.

Anyways, I'm heading out the door to the markets to get some food for the soup Seanny is making for dinner. Zaijian for now.

Well, I'm finally in Taiwan!

Some of the mandarin I studied is starting to kick in, proportionally to my jetlag wearing off, which is a good sign. Sean and Nicole are both being very patient with me as I ask them "what's that character? I recognize it?" or "what's the word for soup again?" (it's Tang first tone btw).

The buildings her are such an interesting jumble, I may have found yet another city that I actually LIKE! ( I have to wait a little more time to be sure). There are the busy shmancy parts of town where there everything is shiny and colorful, flashing signs everywhere. Somehow they manage to feel like they're cheering rather than yelling at you. Little rotating columns in stripes of neon color show you where the barbers are, and neon fans of color are betelnut shops (which is a kind of cool concept). Some of the big buildings have alternating lights that change depending on what day of the week it is. like I said, very colorful!

Then there are the older buildings (more like where we live, but not the really old ones) where cage windowboxes burst with plants, drying clothes, and vines try to invade from the places they've rooted in nooks of the building. There are little vendors selling streetfood all around our building, and they really start to pick up around night. Taiwanese tend to whisper at a shout, so combining the smells that sit heavy in the air - letting you catch a nose curling waft of stinky tofu minutes after theyve finished cooking, or some mouthwatering shaolunbao - with the cheerful clamor of people talking, calling out to passery it ends up feeling, how to explain it, kind of like an enormous hugs for your senses from a very large breasted woman: enveloping, sweaty, but kind of nice. Anyways, I'll work on the analogy.

A far as food goes here I am in heaven. For the kid that went around every chinese place in Davis searching for the perfect potstickers, a place that has whole stores that sell nothing but various kinds of potstickers, Taiwan is a dream. On top of that you have the perfect blend of weird things like "phoenix claw" which is fried chicken legs and things with crazy texture like the tapioca balls in brown sugar goo with tofu, another similar dish with sweet potato jellies instead of tofu. There are just so many variations and textures and tastes that just going out to eat is an adventure!

okay, I need to sleep now, and we leave for the south of Taiwan on a bullet train tomorrow, to celebrate chinese new year. I'm looking forward to seeing how going on a train that gets across taiwan in an hour feels.

more to come :)