Guilin - Update

Yes, I know, I’ve really fallen behind on my blog posts. I guess I overestimated the amount of free time I would have as the summer continued. Well, one way to look at it is that I’m so busy experiencing things to write about, that I haven’t had the time to actually write about them.  But now that we are officially done with our summer program, and I’m on my own exploring Asia with two of my buds (Mike & Jack) I can finally write about my adventures.  No worries, I’ll catch you up to what I’m doing right now in a bit.

So rewind back to the beginning of the month, to the 4^th of July, where we started another one of our long voyages across the country. We boarded our train on the night of the 4^th worn out from the day that ended up being my least favorite 4^th of July in my life.  A quick summary of how the day went: industry visit to an air-conditioning company - four hours in heat that was so dangerous that the employees were given the day off - a traditional Chinese lunch consisting of boiled frogs, duck tongues, chicken feet, spicy octopus and a full chicken (including the head) in a pot – class – hour long cab ride to the train station – train ride. It was basically the opposite of every 4^th I’ve ever had in the US, but I guess I now have a stronger appreciation for those kinds of occasions.

Back to the trip - we’re on the train, in hard sleeper beds (thank God), and after a calm, and practically relaxing trip, we arrive in Guilin.  We all decided that we wanted to go to Guilin after hearing rave reviews from previous students on this trip, and from one of our professor’s.  Guilin is a city in southern China, relatively small in China (only 5 million people), and known for its ridiculously unique scenery of mountains that look like the bottom of egg cartons.  

The first day out we were determined to spend as much time in the mountains as possible, so we booked a tour through our hostile that would take us to the Li River. In China there’s a saying that goes “If you want to see mountains – go to Huangshan, if you want to see water – go to Jiuzhaigou, and if you want to see both – go to Guilin”.

After this trip, Guilin has taken over Shanghai as my favorite place in China. We rode in groups of five in motorized PVC rafts for about two hours up and down the river, soaking in the scenery and goofing around on the raft.  It was such an awesome ride, where I kept finding myself feeling like I was dropped into a National Geographic television show.

We then went to a tiny country town and loaded up two by two into personal bamboo boats. A personal driver pushed us up and down the river with a bamboo pole, which was just about as “Chinese” of an experience as someone could possibly get.  Along this ride, we stopped at a farm and all got off to check out a farmer’s water buffalo.  When we mustered up some courage, we all hopped on the massive animal and rode it around for a while. We also were able to watch a fisherman use an ancient Chinese technique of catching fish where he ties off a Commerant bird’s throat, so the bird catches the fish, brings it back, but isn’t able to swallow it so the fisherman gets to keep it.  Overall, it was another very eventful ride, complete with squirt guns, which we of course used to soak each other.

Eventually, our group made it to Yangshuo, a town about an hour south of Guilin, where we had purchased tickets to see the “Impressions” show that we had heard such great things about. The famous Chinese director that designed the Beijing Olympic opening ceremonies also made shows for a few select Chinese cities, which are known as “Impressions” of the respective city. The show however was very disappointing compared to our high expectations. 

Afterwards, we were tasked with finding our own transportation back to our hostile in Guilin.  Only knowing basic Chinese words and phrases, we weren’t too confident we’d be able to make it back.  But after locating the “bus station” (parking lot with empty busses) we walked around saying “women xiang qu Guilin” (we want to go to Guilin) enough times that a lady heard us and fired up a bus just for our group…a great victory for broken Chinese.

When we arrived in Guilin, we all decided that we couldn’t spend two and a half months in China without seeing the iconic rice terrace mountains. So we made a day trip out to a remote village and spent the day climbing and hiking around, admiring the ancient engineering that turned rocky hillsides into productive crop makers.

The way back was tainted by what ended up being the worst train ride yet. I won’t go into the gory details, but I’ll just say that bodily fluids were excreted very near our seats, multiple times. Thank the lord I’ll never have to do a ride like that again in my life.

So a quick update on my current situation, I’m on a train (soft sleeper bed – hell yeah) headed to Guangzhou. From Guangzhou, Mike, Jack and I will transfer to another train that will take us to Hong Kong.  There we’ll stay 3 nights in Hong Kong, take a ferry across to Macau, and spend a night there. After that we fly from Hong Kong to Phuket, Thailand, where we’re going to have a 4-day bro-fest on the beach.  When that’s all over, we fly back to Shanghai, and spend our final 24 hours there before flying back home with a stop for 12 hours in Dubai. It’s probably going to be one of the wildest weeks of my life, and I’m beyond excited for it.  

Midsemester Break - Beijing

Man, it’s been a busy few days over here.  Both Thermo and EPD are getting into the real heart of the course, but we've still been able to do a lot with our free time. Now that I’m back on a long train ride, I’ve finally got some free time to write. Last weekend almost our entire UW group shipped off to Beijing for our long mid-semester break to check out one of the most famous cities in China.

We didn’t waste much time before getting to the important sights of Beijing. Right away we decided to hit up Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, two of the most recognizable places in China. They were very crowded (to be expected) and just like usual, I underestimated the size of these places. It took us probably two hours just to walk through the Forbidden City. The entire palace is gigantic, with huge courtyards and temples one after another repeating ten times over.

 Tienanmen Square

Later that night we wandered around our hostile’s neighborhood, which was supposed to be one of the more happenin’ places in Beijing. We ended up finding a really cool street with tons of restaurants, bars and vendors (including an awesome Mexican place…first time I’ve seen ranch sauce in China). We also discovered an indoor market that sold basically everything someone could possibly want in China, so it’s safe to say we dropped some serious Kuai there.  I’m still amazed at how real all of the knock-off products look.  They seem like the real deal until you realize you just bought a pair of Nike’s for $10…too good to be true. Simply bargaining for anything is a ton of fun. It’s like playing a verbal chess game with a Chinese woman each time.  Usually the price they originally offer is about 4-5 times more than what I end up paying for the product. The salesladies are really good here too; way more difficult and fun to bargain with than any other place I’ve been to.

Beats by Dre all over the place

Friday morning we booked a day trip through our hostile to go to a little place called the Great Wall of China.  This was one of the things I was most looking forward to doing during my summer here, and it didn’t disappoint. When we got there we were initially pretty bummed that it was foggy, but it ended up making a pretty cool scene for the day. One of the things I overlooked was the steepness of the wall. There were very few flat parts, and it wasn’t uncommon for there to be two foot high steps, making for a pretty steep slope. Some of us were able to make it to both ends of our area in the time allotted, but I decided to relax at first, and then run from one end to the other to check out the impassable part of the wall.  Because the Great Wall is so long, they were only able to restore sections of it for tourism.  Once you do get to the end, the Wall is crumbling and overridden with vegetation.  After a very sweaty, hot day of climbing the wall, we had another treat in store: a toboggan ride down the mountain. This self-controlled thrill ride was practically as fun as any roller coaster I’ve ever been on. A bunch of us went down in a pack together, and we flew down the hill at alarmingly fast speeds and had the workers hollering at us the entire way down. Oh man, it was a ton of fun.

The fog made a really cool effect for some of the pictures I was able to take

A never ending stair workout: the Great Wall of China.

I was able to snap a picture during the toboggan ride. 

Some other highlights of the Beijing trip seeing Olympic Park, which also almost felt like I had been there already after seeing it so many times on TV. The water cube and the bird’s nest really are amazing buildings to see in person. Sadly we weren’t able to get into either of them, but just hanging outside of the places that Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps made history in was really neat. 

We also made a stop at the Beijing Zoo and got to check out some giant pandas. In case you didn't know already, China is panda obsessed. Everywhere you go you see pictures, t-shirts, hats, drinks, ads, phones, EVERYTHING with pandas on it. So the pandas were cool and all, but the real fun of the day came when my friend, Jack, and I were checking out some of the primates. One had just walked into a new room, so we were able to get up real close. I have recently decided that I want to make a movie of all of my experiences this summer, so I started taking footage of him. About 3 seconds in, the pretty sizable monkey stands up, and leaps with as much force as he can at the glass right in front of Jack's face and pounds on the glass while in the air. We were both so surprised by what just happened, that we didn't know what to do. I kept filming, and got footage of the monkey looking at me, then Jack, snarling at us and then walking away. It was insane. I've never interacted with an animal at a zoo like that, and I still can't believe I got it on video! Jack was legitimately shaking for the next few minutes because it caught him so off guard. Anyways, I'm going to try and figure out how to get that uploaded, and put it in my next post, because it's an awesome video.

 What a cuddly fella.

I said they like pandas, didn't I?

I know I’m not actually famous, but when you’re a semi-blonde American and in China, you basically are. I’ve been asked countless times to take pictures with families, children and even to hold a baby. Just yesterday there was a school group walking through our international dorm that mobbed two of my friends and I while we were passing by on our way to lunch. Immediately they all start screaming “HELLO! HI!” and jump up and down when they get a response from us.  The girls immediately pulled out their camera phones to get pictures of and with us throwing up peace signs. Not only that, but Chinese people aren’t afraid to let us know that we are different. Simply walking down the street will get me hundreds of stares and intrigued looks. If I do something especially crazy to them, like jog without a shirt on, I will get full blown halts and stares. I guess I have a better understanding what it feels like to be a minor celebrity.

One of the many pictures I've taken with Chinese people. 

So I realize that I've fallen a week behind on my blogs, and I'm sorry, but it's been insanely busy over here. Also, the heat in Hangzhou is starting to get a little crazy. It's been right around 100 degrees for probably a week and a half now. I'm going to try and fit in my next post about my trip to Guilin sometime this weekend. To give you a quick preview though, it is my new favorite place in China. The views were absolutely amazing, and scenery like nothing I'd ever seen before. Alright, well I gotta split and go play some basketball in 97 degree heat at 5:30PM. Gotta love it.