There and Back Again: A Travelers Tale: Oot 'n Aboot, China Style!

Okay, so I know it's been a little while since my last post and I apologize! To be a little fair, there was a one month period in there where I didn't have my computer. I feel like too much has happened that it has scared me from putting up a new post but I'm going to do it anyway, it will be rushed and probably not quite up to standard quality but it's either this or nothing! Each paragraph is a city with a few pictures for each.

Disclaimer: So blogspot has decided to be uber asinine and not letting the photo's work if I move them in any sense so, this blog is now interactive! The captions are still there and you can match them up with the photo's below. I debated not putting the captions back on for the ones far below but figured that would make it too difficult for some of you. Stupid technology, all I want to do is share information to people all over the world at the click of a button and include photo's taken from a tiny device that fits in my pocket, is that too much to ask!

Life on the farm

So at the start of March we departed for our trek across China. The first step found us in the province of Guizhou, about 45 minutes outside the city of Guiyang on an expats' farm. This portion of the program is meant for us to do a service projectand experience something beyond the tourist China. It was an interesting experience in that we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere on a cattle farm. My work for the week mostly involved the digging of run-off trenches. It was fascinating to see a China so far removed from the coast and even capitalism. Even though the farm was owned by an American/Canadian couple and we didn't meet any actual Chinese, it was the whole experience. The first thing that really made us 'experience' China was the lack of heating. Now in Xiamen they don't have heating either and while I may have complained about this a few times the temperature in my room never dipped far below 13 Celsius. In Guizhou on the other hand though, I don't think I even found a temperature higher than five degrees with our bedroom at night hovering around freezing. This is extremely common in the mountainous/plateau regions of China and I for one am not a fan! This farm was also high enough that we were pretty much in the clouds with fog lasting all day and sometimes no allowing the flashlight to reach the ground.

The village closest to the farm

Beating a Chinese man at international chess in Duyun while eating sugar cane (forced him into a stalemate! Booyah!)

Xi'an city wall

After these adventures we flew onward to China's ancient capital Xi'an. This portion was actually a class portion where we had class pretty much every morning about about 50 pages of a textbook to read every night. It was interesting though to be learning ancient Chinese history in the place where it all began. When not in class and not checking out the Terracotta warriors or biking on the 700 year old city wall there was not really a whole lot to do other than shop in the Muslim Quarter or hang out at Starbucks. Seeing the Terracotta warriors is an interesting experience in that everyone in our group was looking forward to it and we have all heard about it since grade school and while it is quite the sight to see all these soldiers that date to 200 BC there's something about the sheer size of it all that, to be honest, is boring. If there was only one it would be like the Mona Lisa and pretty awesome but there's just so many that eventually it gets a little old, no pun intended. I actually preferred to see the ones that were still all smashed up and yet to be properly excavated. Don't get me wrong, it was still awesome!

Hopefully these look vaguely familiar

Pre-rebuilding

Big Wild Goose Pagoda at sunset

Sleeper train!

We finished up our class in Xi'an and then headed off for our 'Spring Break' to Beijing. While in Beijing we did all the historical stuff as a class including the Summer Palace, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall. Funny story about the Great Wall, when we went as a class we must have picked the absolute worst day to go as the fog must have followed us from Guizhou and to be honest, the Great Wall doesn't look all that great when you can only see the ten feet in front of you. To remedy the situation a few of us did go again to a different section of the wall that turned out to be pretty much abandoned where you could go on the un-restored sections. This part of the wall also involved a chair lift to go up and a toboggan/kart thing to come back down, it was pretty fun. Some other fun times in Beijing involved the flag raising ceremony in Tiananmen square after it had been beautifully blanketed with a dusting of snow and of course eating Peking duck in Peking [for those that don't know, Peking is the Manchu/Wade-Gilles pre-1949 spelling/pronunciation of Beijing].

Great Wall take one

Great Wall take two, you can see a little further here...

Glass floor in the Pearl Tower

The last stop on this adventure took us on a 16 hour train ride south to Shanghai. I have never really had any huge desire to go to Shanghai and now that I've been there my feelings haven't not been to altered. It is a wonderfully fanscinating city in that looking at the skyline from 1990 to 2010 you would never think they are the same city (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/01/picture-of-the-day-shanghai-in-1990-and-2010/69959/). Shanghai also a history of involvement with the Opium wars with the end result of the older areas of the city looking like the old areas of any European city. the east side of the water is compiled of early 1900 European buildings looking over to the west side with the rising skyscrapers looking like a fights about to break out.

Shanghai Skyline

Back across the water from the top of the Pearl Tower

Evening skyline across the water

After visiting these cities, it makes me truly appreciate how lucky I am to be able to study in Xiamen, the air in clean, the roads are lined with palm trees, the ocean is 3 mintues away and it's never too crowded. For someone to say they like China after visiting only Xiamen is like someone saying they love Canada if they only hang out in Ikea. I'm sorry if this blog is less than gripping, my thought the other day followed the lines of either I live a boring life or I'm a horrible story teller, I've settled on the second one, sorry.