Foreign Expertise

Business, Baijiu and Brandon the Great

2012-01-04T22:09:00.000-05:00

This is the final post about a recent business trip I took to northeast Hebei province

I was sitting on a bench by the Bohai Sea in northeast China, half conscious and rubbing my head in a futile effort to relieve a throbbing headache. Pain also resonated from my stomach, and I had that funny feeling in my throat, the kind you get just before you’re about to throw up. A large statue of one of China’s emperors stood nearby, shooting me a disapproving look that said: “Know your limits Brandon.”

How I’d wound up on this bench next to this judgmental statue was a mystery, but I knew the culprit of my memory lapse and head trauma immediately: baijiu.

Baijiu, China’s equivalent of Russian vodka or Irish whiskey, is this wonderful Chinese white liquor that shares more similarities with gasoline than anything you would ever willing drink. And yet drink baijiu I had. A lot of it.

This story begins three days prior. I’d been “invited” (read, told) to join several other foreigners at Beijing Review for a short tour of Hebei, the province that surrounds Beijing municipality. The provincial government wanted to promote a few up and coming high-tech innovation zones and eco-friendly cities.

Before embarking, my boss had briefed our group on Beijing Review’s expectations – she also added that there would be no drinking on this trip.

No drinking? On a business trip?

Past experience from being toted around on these government tours has taught me two things: much of what I see and hear is either a lie or heavily diluted truths; and after a hard day’s touring, everyone is treated to a massive feast with lots of alcohol. Drinking is as much a part of Chinese culture as the Great Wall or chopsticks. Any meal for esteemed guests, especially foreigners, comes with a smorgasbord of delicacies and enough alcohol – be it wine, beer or baijiu – to knock out China’s few remaining pandas.

The ridiculousness of my boss’ statement faded before it really set in. She would have had more luck stopping the sun from rising than preventing us from drinking.

And I was right.

At each stop, local officials brought out their best bottles of baijiu. My reputation as a baijiu drinker grew with each toast.

When drinking China’s sacred white wine, I’ve mostly stuck with cheaper brands from the man 711 minimarts across Beijing. They taste like battery acid, but they get the job done at an affordable price. The baijiu at each feast came in orb-shaped bottles of aqua blue and ceramic white. While maintaining its kick as it slip down my throat, this baijiu had less of an explosive, eroding effect on my stomach. I liked this top-shelf baijiu, about as much as you can like something you know is shaving years off your life with each swig.

When we reached Luanzhou, a city three hours east of Beijing, one of my Chinese colleagues let slip that I enjoyed drinking baijiu. I was doomed.

At lunch the following day, I became the toasting target of every government official in the banquet room. Toasts were incessant, followed by shouts of “ganbei!” (bottoms up). Finishing my glass each time would yield cheers and a refill. Not finishing meant just a refill. Either way, I was losing it.

In between glasses, I would scarf down noodles or rice, anything to absorb the baijiu that was quickly filling my stomach. I also tried to sneak in a few bottles of water.

One of the local Party officials had taken a liking to me, constantly giving me the thumbs up every time a toast was proposed. I tried to avoid looking in his direction, knowing that eye contact would result in a raised glass and another ganbei. Noticing my evasive glances around the room, he rose from his chair and stumbled over to me.

“Beijing Review, number one magazine,” he said. “You are number one foreigner. Great drinker. Great man. Ganbei!”

We drank, turning our cups upside to prove they were empty. He looked at me again, or tried to look at me, with glazed eyes and a wobble that suggested he was on the verge of collapse.

“Great man. Brandon the Great!”

That was the last time I saw him. The official stumbled toward his seat, then changed course, heading instead for the door, and was gone.

My interpreter was also very drunk. He looked at me and said, “I want to throw up.”

By this point, I’d switched into Chinese mode, speaking the language and refilling other people’s glasses. I told him throwing up was not allowed. There was more toasting to do. Slowly, I began working my way around the table, at the encouragement of one of the Party officials, toasting all 11 of the remaining guests. After completing my circuit, I headed straight to the bathroom.

Then it was time to go. Everyone was ushered outside where hands were shaken, business cards exchanged and promises to revisit made. I got in our tour van and passed out.

Or blacked out, because the next fully conscious memory I had was sitting on the bench by the statue. We had arrived in Qinhuangdao, near the coast of the Bohai Sea. The statue was of Qin Shihuang, China’s first emperor. Apparently before making our way to the sea, we’d taken a quick tour of a small park. I didn’t remember that part.

For the rest of the trip I stuck with tea and an occasional beer. Brandon the Great would have to wait to reign another day.

Hainan for the Holiday

2011-12-19T06:56:00.000-05:00

Heading to Hainan, an island and China's southern most province, for Christmas. Six days of sun, beaches and tropical resorts, a nice break from frigid Beijing and its lack of an appropriate Christmas atmosphere.

And the winner is...

2011-12-12T06:52:00.000-05:00

In a previous blog post I mentioned a photo contest that my company was promoting for one of the Chinese government's friendship committees. Under the banner of "Green Beijing" the competition encouraged foreigners to photograph anything in the city that exemplified man coexisting with nature.

I spent the better part of the summer taking photos to participate but had to laugh at the competition's theme. Beijing isn't exactly a green city. I'd go as far as saying that it's the antithesis of what a green, eco friendly metropolis should be. The skies are constantly gray, cars jam the streets, trash is strewn about the streets, and, as I recently learned, the city is surrounded by a ring of dumps where the city's trash is piling up at an astronomical rate.

On the few blue sky days we had here during the summer (I think there was about three) I was out in search of a photo op. And it paid off -- one of my photos won second place in the competition. It wasn't the best of the photos I submitted, but one of the judges must have seen something in it.

Beidaihe: Silicon Valley of North China

2011-12-08T09:34:00.000-05:00

This is the seventh post about a recent business trip I took to northeast Hebei province

Near Qinhuangdao in the northeastern tip of the province, the beaches and streets of Beidaihe provide everything that can be expected of a small, coastal town: sand, water and seafood restaurants aplenty. Walks along the sandy shores give visitors the chance to breathe in fresh air — or at least a breeze that’s slightly less industrially tainted.

Beidaihe, if the provincial government’s blueprint unfolds as planned, will one day also be the Silicon Valley of North China.

An information technology park is taking shape that will employ 5,000 engineers, computer programmers and project managers when it opens in 2014. The info tech park will create computer programs, cartoons and movies as part of China’s effort to mass produce culture and broaden its soft power influence. And like Zhongguancun in Beijing, Beidaihe will one day be home to international clients and companies.

More so than the tech park, Beidaihe is known as being China’s premiere beach resort, for the average tourist and Party officials.

Buildings around the town mimic European architectural designs, a result of that continent’s influence throughout Beidaihe’s history. And like any beach town, merchants desperately try to peddle the usual beach souvenirs: seashell necklaces, decorated turtle shells, crab claws, pieces of carved driftwood, and the occasional polished rock. Robocop-looking security cameras (see slideshow) graced each corner. A few statues of tourists portrayed the Chinese cliche of foreigners: fat, bearded, balding slobs who are often too tired to walk around and need constant breaks.

At the Beidaihe Olympic Park, we saw statues of former commissioners of the Olympic committee, the most prominent of which was a Spaniard with an unusually large nose. A few of the Chinese in our group laughed, touching the large bronze nose and saying “da bizi”, which means big nose and is a commonly used phrase for foreigners.

One of my Chinese colleagues asked if most people in the West had big noses like his. I said “Of course not, but some of us do,” getting a few laughs from the other Chinese. I chuckled too, but not at the big nosed Spaniard. I was imagining everyone’s reaction if I’d pointed at the Yao Ming stone engraving nearby and asked if a certain part of Yao’s male anatomy was small like other Chinese guys or if that was just a silly stereotype from the West.

Instead, I held my tongue and kept that little quip to myself.

I’ve come to just shrug off these quasi-racist jabs the Chinese throw at foreigners every now and then. For them, it’s a cultural thing, done in good fun or because of a certain ignorance of Western ways. But I do like to throw a few jabs of my own every now and then. Just for fun.

Shanhaiguan: Into the Sea

2011-12-05T06:31:00.000-05:00

This is the sixth post about a recent business trip I took to northeast Hebei province

Sizeable stretches of the Great Wall work their way through Hebei, with notable sections like Jinshanling and Simatai drawing large crowds of tourists. While these ranges in the ancient wall provide stunning views of the ancient structure as it works its way over rolling mountains, an equally great section of the wall can be found in Shanhaiguan, just north of Qinhuangdao.

The Shanhaiguan section is the wall’s easternmost reach -- it’s beginning, or end – where is meets the sea. Coined Old Dragon’s Head (laolongtou), the wall looks like a dragon drinking from or about to dive into the sea. The original wall is long gone, destroyed during China’s tumultuous history in the earlier half of the twentieth century, but reconstruction efforts in the 1980s have returned Old Dragon’s Head to its former glory. A few of the original stones were used in the reconstruction – the remaining stones were carted off by locals to be used in building their own homes.

Fires in the Night

2011-12-02T07:32:00.000-05:00

This is the fifth post about a recent business trip I took to Hebei province

While driving through Tangshan on the first night of our government-sponsored tour of northeast Hebei, I noticed a small group of people huddled around a small bonfire. They were tossing pieces of paper into the flame to keep it going. As we drove through the city, I saw more fires.

My interpreter said they were making offerings to their ancestors. The pieces of paper, called joss paper or hell money, are monetary offerings so the people’s ancestors have cash in the afterlife.

When we got to Qinhuangdao, I snuck out of the hotel late at night to find a few of these people. On one of the street corners, about 20 people were busy burning the papers. I tried to be as discrete as possible, but there’s only so much blending in a white guy with a big camera can do on a small street in a city that doesn’t get many foreign visitors.

Qinhuangdao: Parks and Innovation

2011-11-29T19:51:00.000-05:00

This is the fourth post in a series about a business trip I took to northeast Hebei province

Tangshan had heavy industries. Luanzhou had tourism. Qinhuangdao, the next city on our tour, had hi-tech parks.

Our government guides took us to two companies in Qinhuangdao’s Economy and Technology Development Park: Contec Medical Systems and Tianye Tolian Heavy Industry.

Contec is a medical equipment designer and manufacturer. From touch screen heart monitors and advanced ultrasound scanners to handheld ECG devices, Contec boasts a hi-tech arsenal of equipment for hospitals and clinics.

The company, founded in 1992, is one of many hi-tech enterprises enjoying preferential policies and a surge in sales as the city focuses on attracting private companies from home and abroad to boost the area’s profile as a center for hi-tech.

Inside Contec’s facilities, our group watched long production lines of people assemble medial equipment. There was a strong stench in the air, of plastics and paint and other things that probably aren’t good for your health (but don’t take my word, I’m not a doctor).

Aside from Contec, 103 hi-tech enterprises call the development park “home”. Multinationals, GE among them, from the United States, Japan and Korea have production facilities or R&D centers in the park.

Tianye Tolian Heavy Industry is also enjoying the perks of the development park. Tolian, which specializes in a special line of construction vehicles and machinery, has been the dominant player in bridge building in China, especially as the country enjoys a massive infrastructure construction boom.

Hi-tech parks like this are springing up all over China as the country gears itself toward domestic innovation. The country wants to rely less on foreign nations, which are already hesitant or unwilling to share their tech with China, and produce advanced products on their own to boost China’s image and credibility in the international community. Knocking off foreign products, China finally seems to be realizing, make not a world power with cultural and soft power influence.

Living Behind the Great Firewall

2011-11-28T09:05:00.001-05:00

The photo is a typical screen I get when trying to access Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or any Western social media website in China

It seems cheap sneakers, iPads and iPhones, and a Christmas wish list of consumer goods won’t be China’s only exports arriving on America’s shores. Censorship and government meddling in a free and open Internet might be turning up, too.

In November, Congress began holding hearings on SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), a bill that will crack down on online intellectual property theft. Targeting “rogue websites” that host copyright infringing content – music, movies, books, software and the digital likes – the House bill, and its Senate counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act, authorizes the Department of Justice to maintain a blacklist of block-worthy sites, most of which exist on servers outside America’s jurisdiction.

Despite the facade of pure and noble intents – combating the theft of U.S. property – the House bill provides broad and ambiguous definitions that will not only block online pirate havens but also cause innocent websites to get caught in SOPA’s nets. It will also make it easier for the government and entertainment industry to pressure Internet Service Providers (ISPs), like PenTelaData, to monitor individual user traffic.

Blacklisted Web domains. Government oversight. Widespread blocking. These are words and phrases typically reserved for the likes of despotic regimes — Cuba or Iran for example — where pervasive censorship is the norm.

As Time magazine puts it, SOPA will allow the government to eliminate alleged pirate sites by essentially “disappearing them,” or making them invisible or inaccessible on your web browser. “Disappearing,” unless you’re referring to a magic act, is another one of those word that should never be associated with the actions of democracies.

The Chinese government certainly isn’t shy about its censorship. Since China began opening up in the late 1970s under Deng Xiaoping, the government has been engaged in a constant balancing act between openness and control, says Rebecca MacKinnon in her essay “Flatter World and Thicker Walls”. Deng likened the reform to opening a window for fresh air only to have a few “flies” (read, new ideas that run counter to the Party line) blow in.

To swat those flies in the modern age of the Internet, China has between 30,000 and 50,000 people involved with the Ministry of Public Security’s Golden Shield Project, commonly called the “Great Firewall of China,” according to Amnesty International. The project employs a variety of techniques to monitor the flow of traffic and control what sites are accessible to China’s close to 500 million Internet users.

From firsthand experience, dealing with the Great Firewall of China is certainly annoying but easily tolerable. If I want to chat with friends on Facebook, or check out a new YouTube video, or read blogs, or tweet, or retweet, or have full access to Gmail, or even view my hometown newspaper the Times News’ webpage (apparently its coverage is too sensitive and controversial for Chinese readers and has subsequently been blocked here), I just have to log into a subscription-based proxy service that allows me to circumvent China’s firewalls. I used that proxy to publish this post.

As inconvenient as access denial to certain websites gets, for the most part I’m indifferent towards the Chinese government’s Internet censoring and monitoring protocols, because that’s what I’ve come to expect of China. My expectations for America are higher.

Granted, SOPA doesn’t go to the same censorship extremes as China. It doesn’t even come close. The Chinese government is out to quash political comments on sensitive China-centric issues. SOPA is meant to protect American intellectual property from foreign online pirates. But the similarities are still there.

Aside from assigning blacklisting authority to the government, SOPA will require website operators to prove their sites aren’t being used for copyright infringement, the same “guilty until proven innocent” guidelines the Chinese government imposes on domestic social networking sites. The House bill also puts an unprecedented burden on ISPs to comb over all user traffic to find violators or face punishment themselves. Censoring could quickly turn into over-censoring as ISPs looking to avoid litigation block sites that aren’t hosting copyrighted material but share keywords or have user posted links with sites that do.

The necessity for stronger laws to clamp down on web-based piracy is definitely there, especially with Hollywood studios, record companies and publishing houses claiming $135 billion in annual loses from online theft. American intellectual property deserves protection, but perhaps not the way Congress is proposing, and certainly not if it emulates the kind of draconian tactics employed by China’s Internet censors.

Luanzhou: Manufacturing Culture

2011-11-26T23:55:00.001-05:00

This is the third post in a series about a recent business trip I took to northeast Hebei province

Like Tangshan, Luanzhou relies on its resource-guzzling heavy industries as its main economic driving force. Now, the city is trying to add a second pillar to support the local economy: cultural tourism.

Luanzhou’s efforts fall under the central government’s broader umbrella of streamlining cultural production in China. The Chinese government also wants “to improve Chinese citizens’ sense of identity and confidence in Chinese culture”, according to China’s CCTV.

The city is making the most of these efforts, combining it’s industrial advantages with its fledgling tourist industry.The centerpiece of Luanzhou’s tourist-boosting plan is a new ancient city park, a 133.3-hectare residential and commercial zone straddling the border of the modern city. Constructed in traditional, local architectural fashion, the city’s streets are lined with restaurants, cafes, bars and small shops. For a hefty fee, small courtyard flats can be rented or purchased, completing the feel of living in ancient times.

Costs and the necessity for better infrastructure (the roads were a little bumpy and unable to handle heavy traffic), the most obvious obstacle to Luanzhou’s ambition of becoming a tourist hotspot is its location. Stuck between Beijing and Qinhuangdao, Luanzhou can never hope to compete with the cultural and historic landmarks of the Chinese capital or the pristine beaches and relaxing atmosphere of the northern port city. For the time being, Luanzhou will focus on attracting urbanites in need of a relaxing break from city life.

Our group was given the special treatment while touring Luanzhou. At the ancient city park, a special evening show was performed, with fire dancers and people in costumes jumping about. Afterward, we were encouraged to take part in one of Luanzhou’s traditional dances (which was apparently video taped and shown on local TV stations).We were also shuttled outside of the city proper to Wanfeng Tower, a hilltop pagoda built in the 900s but partially destroyed in the earthquake of 1976. It was recently renovated to promote tourism.

As our guides and the other Party officials went on and on about tourism in Luanzhou, my interest turned to a large industrial facility at the base of the hill the pagoda was on. It was grossly out of place; a scar of modernity on an otherwise traditional and ancient landscape. It was also barely visible through the thin layer of smog hanging over the area, no doubt produced by the facility itself.My interpreter saw what I was looking at. He laughed. “This is what they were talking about before when they said ‘mixing industry and culture,’” he said. I laughed too.The facility, it turns out, was the largest iron mine in Asia. I think it’s safe to say the mine wouldn’t be closing anytime soon just to beautify the area as part of Luanzhou’s tourist revitalization plan.

Caofeidian: Emerald City by the Sea

2011-11-23T19:14:00.000-05:00

This is the second post in a series about a recent business trip to Hebei province

China, now in the midst of an epic national construction boom, is building many things. It’s building forests of apartment towers. It’s building malls (many of which remain empty of shops and shoppers). It’s building an extensive system of highways and high-speed railways. It’s also building entire cities.

South of Tangshan, on the coast of the Bohai Sea, one of those cities is taking shape — or, more accurately, rising from the sea.Caofeidian is the Hebei provincial government’s wundercity.

Construction started in 2003 with a massive land reclamation project that extended the boundary of the coastline about 10 km into the sea. The city will be a marvel in green technology and a demonstration zone for China’s recycling economy — or so government officials told me.Before we got to see the actual city and harbor area, they showed our group — two other foreign experts and a few Chinese staffers from the magazine — a few models of Caofeidian. The city is going to be a jewel of Hebei’s Bohai Sea economic circle, a new port to ship out all the great things northeast China manufactures — heavy duty construction vehicles, advanced medical equipment and an assortment of low-tech consumer goods to name a few — to northeast Asia and the rest of the world.For the time being, Caofeidian mostly exists as a scale model with a Christmas-color array of red and green lights and small plastic buildings.

The city is still being built. Today it’s a ghost town of highrises and abandoned streets with the ubiquitous cranes on every corner. When it’s completed, the city will be home to about 1 million people, 400,000 of which will be workers in the city’s port and surrounding industrial facilities.Some of those facilities are already pumping out products.

The steel mills are particularly busy. Shougang Jingtang Iron and Steel officially opened its plant in Caofeidian in 2009 after moving its homebase out of Beijing municipality. Shougang is one of many heavy industries being relocated to coastal areas for financial and environmental reasons.Beijing and Tianjin, in an attempt to clean up the ever-present clouds of smog hanging over their cities, have ordered a number of heavy industries out of their municipalities. Shougang was one of those companies asked to leave.

When I talked with one of the company’s managers, he bragged about the steel plant’s efficiency. More than half of the plant’s energy was generated internally, from the steel making process. He also said Shougang’s new facility produced zero — that’s the numeral 0 — carbon emissions. Outside the facility, smokestacks belched large plumes of grey into the sky, but apparently these contributions to the atmosphere didn’t contain any CO2, just other pollutants that added to the seaside mist hovering over the city.

On paper, Caofeidian has the potential to be a true eco-city — a milestone in China’s “go green” efforts — like no other in the world. It also has the potential to sink into the sea. While a leader in manufacturing solar panels that would be applied in the city, many of China’s other green techs are still in their infancy. Application on a city-wide scale would be met with bugs and breakdowns.

More importantly, China’s green movement has taken a back seat to the country’s economic growth, which relies on outdated technologies and heavily polluting industrial practices. Despite the government rhetoric of embracing eco-friendly means of production, these means are currently incapable of driving the economy. Until the country develops and applies newer, cleaner and greener methods of production, Caofeidian and other emerald cities in the Bohai economic rim will exist only in fiction, or as scale models with flashing lights.

Tangshan: The Phoenix City

2011-11-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

This is the first post in a series on a recent business trip I took to northeast Hebei province

Tangshan, a two-hour drive east of Beijing in Hebei Province, is a city of industry. The site of China’s first coalmine, Tangshan is widely considered the cradle of modern industry in China, complete with snazzy factories and all the sky-tainting pollution that goes with it.I was there in late October on a business trip — a provincial government sponsored trip across the northeastern part of Hebei to see how great the province is and then write about it.

Tangshan was the first city on our tour de Hebei.Our first stop was Kailuan National Mine Park, the nation’s first mine. Replica buildings and a few rust-covered pieces of equipment tried desperately to mimic conditions back in the late 1800s when the mine first opened. I thought a few re-enactors would have added to their attempts to make the park seem authentic.A large statue with a few miners stood in the park’s center. It honored the hundreds of thousands of men who worked, and the many that were buried, underground to dig that black rock vital to industry from the ground and into Chinese factories.

But the coup de grace lies within the mine’s museum, where hall after hall hail China’s achievements in manipulating coal use. One claims that China was the first country to use coal, although not to fuel blast furnaces or industrial plants (which were imported from the West).

One of Tangshan’s more impressive sights, if only because of its backstory, is Nanhu Ecological Park. Prior to becoming the eco-haven it is, with 1,300 hectares dedicated to all things eco-friendly and green, the park was a massive compost pile. Following the earthquake in 1976, people in Tangshan needed a place to dump their trash. They dumped it at the site of a mine that collapsed in the quake — that site is today’s park. In the late 1990s, the local government stepped in, re-beautifying the area and turning it into a pristine ecological park with waters that rival the West Lake in Hangzhou and a variety of wild flora and fauna. Looking out across the lake from the peak of a man-made hill (but not made of trash) I was amazed with the view: the lake, the small islands, the prominence of the colors green and blue, and the nuclear power plant a few kilometers in the distance (look for it in the photo slideshow).

Industrial birthplace and nice new eco-park aside, Tangshan is more widely known as the epicenter of a massive earthquake that completely leveled the city in 1976. The city’s memorial park is a sobering reminder to nature’s destructiveness and unpredictability. A few toppled buildings and bare steel frames have been left untouched since the disaster. A long, marble wall stretching roughly the length of a football field — a solemn attempt to put the death toll of 240,000 into perspective — has the names of the victims etched onto its black, reflective surface. Inside a small museum, a model of the city shows the extent of the damage: a few buildings were left standing but the majority of the structures in Tangshan were turned to rubble.The recovery was swift. Within months, many of Tangshan’s industries were up and running again, causing many people to call it the Phoenix City: a miracle reborn from the ashes.

Today, Tangshan is again a center of industry, particularly in steel. According to the Sydney Morning Herald: “At current growth rates, if the city was a country, it would overtake the United States within two years to become the world’s third largest steel producing nation behind China and Japan.” That’s a lot of steel. But with China in the midst of a massive construction boom, the country’s insatiable need for steel is real. To fuel its blast furnaces, Tangshan relies exclusively on its coal mines to keep the fires burning. The result is pollution, and lots of it.

Government leaders boast about new green policies that will clean up the environment, but until they take these measures seriously — which likely result in the province’s industrial strength taking a hit — it seems the phoenix that rose from the ashes could lose its way as it soars higher into the smog.

A Checkup with Doc Sun

2011-11-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

Aside from the memorial, Nanjing has a number of less morose attractions. The Grand Canal, a major commercial waterway running from Beijing to Hangzhou, passes through the city, as does the great Yangtze River. There’s a few halls to the people’s heroes; and there’s a zoo.

But Nanjing’s major tourist draw – and the reason I was visiting -- is the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern China. Sun was a major political figure in the earlier part of the twentieth century, pushing for reform in China. He was a revolutionary, and the Chinese like revolutionaries. In 1911 Sun helmed an uprising that overthrew China’s last monarchy and ushered in a Chinese republic.
The new nation’s capital was established in Nanjing.

The Republic of China was short lived, with warlordism, infighting between China’s Kuomintang (KMT) and Communists (CCP), and the Japanese invasion in the 1930s hampering any real democratic progress. The doctor died in 1925 before stability could be established in the country – the CCP achieved that in 1949 but left Sun’s vision out of their equation for a New China.

The memorial hall sat atop a hill, hundreds of steps leading to its peak. Inside was a large statue of Sun sitting Abe Lincoln-style, looking out over China. Sun’s marble coffin was in a separate room that was closed off.

As I left the memorial hall I too looked out over the landscape. Gentle hills, green forests and no signs of the city. It was peaceful – a bit too peaceful actually. I somehow felt that this had been done on purpose; that the communists had stuck Sun out here in the hills to hide him.

Sun helped establish a new China, but he was also the founder of the KMT, the political arch-nemesis of the CCP that fled to Taiwan after being defeated in a civil war in 1949. Today, CCP historical revisionists conveniently leave out or distort the fact that Sun embraced democracy -- and not the kind with Chinese characteristics – which exists in Taiwan but not the mainland.

So Sun gets stuck in the hills of Nanjing. Every so often -- for major political events like the centenary of the 1911 Revolution on October 10 – the Chinese government rolls out a giant portrait of the father of the nation in Tiananmen Square. But it doesn’t stay there for long, less the people start looking into what the dear doctor actually stood for.

When Good Men Do Nothing

2011-11-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

The world for those of us who bleed blue and white has been turned upside down. No one could have predicted the nightmare of the last week that has befallen Penn State, that words like “honor”, “prestige” and “class” would be associated with “sex scandal” when thinking of Dear Old State. And those that could have foreseen this, that did see this, did nothing.

For the Nittany Lion’s football coach Joe Paterno it means the end of a 46-year career of record wins and molding young men and women into honorable adults. For the university it means a reputation scarred by the horrifying story of Jerry Sandusky, a true monster who allegedly sexually assaulted eight boys over the course of 15 years, and the cover-up that followed. For alumni and fans it’s a gut-wrenching, hollow, disorienting feeling of lost faith and confusion, an endless query of hows and whys.

For the victims it means justice, but justice that should have been served much, much sooner.

The horror engulfing Happy Valley shares a few parallels concerning moral obligations to one that recently unfolded in China, causing equal public outcry because people – good, decent people – stood idly by instead of preventing something terrible from happening.

On October 13, Wang Yue, a 2-year-old girl, was hit by a van and then run over by another on a narrow street in Foshan, south China’s Guangdong province. Between the two hit and runs, 18 people walked past the girl lying on the street. Not one of them stopped to help.

An old woman finally dragged the girl from the street and tried to find the child’s mother.

Wang eventually died of her wounds on October 21.

The death triggered a nationwide outcry about the lack of morality and trust in Chinese society. Why hadn’t at least one of the passersby tried to help the girl?

Communist Party officials and Chinese netizens blame the negligence and apathy of the drivers and passersby on the country’s economic development -- the clash of traditional culture with money worshipping that seems to be possessing Chinese society as the people become more affluent. People care more about money and themselves than the well-being of others. Chinese educators have even proposed including courses on humanitarianism in school curriculums. Ultimately, it’s a social and legal issue more so than a moral one.

Distrust of the government, especially as numerous food scandals, poor air quality and an uncontrollable housing market plague the country, is ubiquitous among Chinese. Trust issues have trickled from the top all the way down to affect the relationship and dynamics between people at the grassroots level.

Probably the main reason the Chinese are wary of extending a helping hand is the absence of laws that protect Good Samaritans, particularly from extortion by those they help.

In 2006, an elderly woman in Nanjing, a city in east central China, successfully sued a man who had stopped to help her after she injured herself at a bus station. Despite inadequate evidence, the man was found guilty and ordered to pay $7,000 in compensation.

Prior to young Wang’s death in October, an 88-year-old man died after falling outside a vegetable market in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei province. A crowd formed around the man but no one offered assistance. By the time he was rushed to a hospital – after family members were informed of the accident – the man had suffocated from a massive nosebleed.

In less extreme situations, I too have witnessed this bystander mentality. While sightseeing in Xi’an, central China, I stood petrified in front of a major tourist attraction as a man dragged a woman by her hair out of the queue, pushing her to the ground and yelling in her face. The rest of the people in line just stared. So did the security guards.

When people in China are often punished, not rewarded, for doing good deeds, I can’t blame them for failing to intervene. I can’t say the same for the men at Penn State.

Paterno and Penn State University President Graham Spanier sealed their fates in 2002 when they failed to take further action after learning about Sandusky’s atrocious deeds. Their ouster on November 9 is both unsurprising and necessary for the university to start pulling itself out of the hell it now finds itself in.

As a proud Nittany Lion, I’m shocked that the Paterno era atPenn State is over and even more upset that it unraveled this way. I’m livid with the media’s coverage ofthe scandal, how they’ve been fixated almost entirely on Paterno, vilifying thecoach instead of focusing on the real culprit, Sandusky, and on Spanier’s role.But most of all I’m disgusted that men of integrity -- men whose hands I shook -- let us, the Penn State community, down. Men who stood by and didnothing while evil prevailed.

PHOTOS: I took these photos during Penn State's 2007 homecoming game against Wisconsin. I'd never been that close to Joe Paterno, and I was still pretty far away on the sideline but thrilled nonetheless to at least be standing at his level on the field. I had a press pass to Beaver Stadium that day and was exploring the back corridors and hallways. While heading to the press conference area, I opened a door and there stood JoePa. I stepped aside, holding the door and giving him the "after you" arm swing. He just chuckled, thanked me and walked slowly through. I was surprised that he was alone -- I'd expected an entourage of coaches or football players -- but then again it was his "house". It's one of my fondest memories of Paterno, one I take pride in and one I will continue to share with friends in years to come.

The 300,000

2011-11-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

Nanjing has temples. Nanjing has palaces. Nanjing has pagodas. Nanjing has all the typical cultural landmarks common in every other city in China. Yet, this burgeoning metropolis in east China’s Jiangsu province sets itself apart because of its role in China’s modern history.

I visited Nanjing, which means “south capital”, in early October during China’s National Day celebration. Opting to skip Nanjing’s standard tourist fare (once you’ve seen one temple, palace or pagoda, you’ve pretty much seen them all) I made my way to the Nanjing Massacre memorial.

The site, officially called the Memorial for Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression, honors the estimated 300,000 unarmed soldiers and civilians killed during the Japanese occupation that started in 1937. More than 20,000 women were also raped by soldiers of Japan’s Imperial Army. The incident still haunts China. It’s one of the reasons, if not the reason, animosity exists between the two Asian nations today.

The atmosphere around the memorial was cold, quiet, dark. Even with the afternoon sun beating down on me, I felt a chill.

A giant statue of a slender woman holding her dead son stood outside the memorial’s entrance. Her face looking to the heavens in anguish, as if to beckon “Why?” Leading up to, but positioned as if running away from, the memorial where smaller sculptures of victims -- mothers, fathers, children and friends -- each with a different expression of horror on their faces. Their hollow eyes cried out for help; their faces were twisted by pain and fear.

Once inside the memorial, it only got chillier.

One of the first things I saw when entering was a massive slab of black marble with the number 300,000 carved into it. For the victims. In another area was a long wall with the names of the dead or missing inscribed on its shiny, gray surface. A plain of football- sized rocks marked the spot where a mass grave of 10,000 bodies had been discovered after the Second World War. Near the end of the memorial a torch burned steadily -- the spirit of the city and perhaps a symbol for a new tomorrow.

Canal Town

2011-11-01T15:30:00.000-04:00

Known as the Venice of the East, Suzhou in east China’s Jiangsu province is praised for its lush gardens and enchanting waterways. Miles of narrow, interconnected canals criss-crossing the old section of the city provide endless opportunities to explore and discover. Alleys and major walkways lined with quaint single-storey houses retain their local flavor while catering to the needs of the modern traveler (i.e. better bathrooms and coffee shops). And small wooden boats give visitors the chance to see a different side of Suzhou at a much slower pace. The absence of major industries pumping pollutants into the air leaves the heavens an unnatural blue.

I visited this canal town during China’s National Holiday in early October and expected the tiny alleys and narrow canals to be packed. I was pleasantly surprised to find the opposite: a dearth of tourists that allowed me to explore the old city without bumping elbows with noisy Chinese travelers. The skies were clear, no rain or smog clouds in sight.

Venturing away from the main city corridors, where malls and McDonald’s were plentiful, I spent an entire day getting lost in side streets and following river passages from one neighborhood to another. For hours I watched the small wooden boats come and go. I enjoyed the skies -- those immaculate blue skies -- and fresh air – well, almost fresh air.

Locals still live in many of the houses. As they have for hundreds of years, they use the waterways in their daily chores. From fishing and washing laundry and dishes, to dumping out wastewater and -- as I assumed from the smell -- disposing human waste, the canals are still a vital part of these peoples’ lives, although the waters show signs of modern use.

Still, Suzhou is a throwback to older times and a nice respite from city life. And did I mention the skies?

Photos from Suzhou, Tongli, and Zhouzhuang

Tea Time in Hangzhou

2011-10-27T22:09:00.007-04:00

There’s a saying in China: Above is heaven, below is Hangzhou… This adage of old suggests that the beauty of heaven has somehow trickled down to earth and -- voila! -- Hangzhou was formed! Having visited the city in east central China I can vouch for this assessment. It is beautiful, heavenly even, but the ancient saying leaves out one critical factor, so I propose an amendment to the heaven-Hangzhou comparison. Perhaps it should read: "Above is heaven, below is Hangzhou… and people, and people, and people".

The lakes, hills and pagodas make Hangzhou China’s most visited tourist destination – around 20 million foreign and domestic tourists visit each year. I was there during China's National Holiday in early October. I knew there would be crowds but I desperately needed to get out of Beijing, which would be even more mobbed than other places in China.

The walkways around Hangzhou’s West Lake bustled with camera-totting tourists eager to photograph everything. The mass of people gave a collective Ohhh and Ahhh to every temple, pagoda and bridge around the lake. I was just looking for something new. Once you've seen a temple or pagoda in China, you've pretty much seen them all. The fact that the friend of a guy who grew rice for one of China's emperors once visited said temple or pagoda doesn't add to its historical value, at least not in my mind.

Aside from its lakes, Hangzhou is a hotspot for tea, some of the best in China. The hills and valleys to the west of Hangzhou that I saw were littered with villages and tea plantations – so that was where I wanted to be.

The invasion of tourists for the holiday made it impossible to flag down a cab to the villages. Buses were too crowded; biking was too dangerous. So I walked. It took five and a half hours.

The road to Longjing, which means "dragon well", was mostly paved, but soon turned to a dirt path through a valley then up another hill. I arrived at Longjing soaked and ready to drink.

Approaching Longjing, my head concealed by the hood of my jacket and my umbrella, many of the villagers paid me no attention. When they realized I was a foreigner, the calling began.

At each little tea house, an equally little Chinese women would pop out and run my way. “You, drink green tea?” each asked. Although meant as a question, it sounded more like a command. Before I could answer “Yes, I will drink green tea”, an elderly arm would be latched around mine, dragging me in the direction of a few large umbrella-covered tables.

At each house, I had the same tea, Longjing tea. The more expensive cups were brewed with water from the dragon well and at 80 yuan ($12) a pop I expected nothing short of magical. They didn’t disappoint. Each tasted just a little different from the last; some stronger than others but all refreshing and providing a boost of energy from my long trek to the village.

The last tea house I stopped in was my favorite. It was a simple house: a two storey, white walled construction with one door and no windows. A sign with the character for tea (cha) hung above the doorway and there was one table and one chair -- an appropriate setup for me, the lone traveler -- out front.

Walking toward the house, a small woman saw me and ran out to usher me the rest of the distance – about 10 feet – to the chair. She ran inside, brought out a cup, threw in some tea leaves, repeating the words “longjing cha” several times and then added hot water. After each sip, she would quickly refill my cup. With the free refills, by the time I had finished, I’d downed about four cups for the price of one.

Now full of tea, and in need of a bathroom, I decided to wrap up tea time. I thanked the woman, bought a small box of tea handpicked by her family and made my way back up the hill and out of the village to the nearest bus station.

The next day I ventured even further into the hills to Meijiawu. Much like in Longjing, the calls to “Drink green tea” were constant. It was time for tea, again, and I spent the rest of the afternoon sipping tea, exploring the quiet village and enjoying short walks through the peaceful, tourist-free hills.

Happy Birthday Brandon, Happy Birthday China

2011-10-11T07:27:00.000-04:00

The People’s Republic of China turned 62 this year to a modest celebration. Instead of parading its nukes, Cold War-era tanks and aircraft carrier-killing missiles up and down Chang’an Avenue, Beijing’s main east-west axis, China’s leaders laid flowers at the Monument of the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square. Political speeches about China’s rise as a global player were prevalent.

October 10 marked the centenary of the 1911 Revolution that overthrew China’s last imperial dynasty, ushering in the birth of a Chinese republic.

Smack in the middle of the festivities was another celebration, albeit a largely overlooked one: my birthday. And not just any birthday, but my quarter century milestone. On October 6 I turned 25.

China’s working masses get a week off work for the National Day and related festivities causing trains, planes and automobile lanes to become mobbed with people.

Wanting to avoid the inevitable baijiu toasts and shot drinking that accompany any birthday bash, I, too, decided to travel. I also needed a desperate change of scenery and some fresh east coastal Chinese air. I spent my special day in an American restaurant in Nanjing, China’s capital pre-World War II, eating a deliciously decadent cheeseburger, listening to classic American rock and fending off a particularly annoying prostitute. She didn’t even know it was my birthday, but still, she persisted.

The thrill, or anxiety, of turning 25 just wasn’t there, because in a sad sort of way the celebration wasn’t a true milestone. While October 6 made it official, for the better part of three years I’ve pretended to be 25.

Age in China, especially the workplace, is a delicate subject. The top spots at most companies are reserved for those experienced professionally and chronologically. Beijing Review and most Chinese publications are no exception. Almost all the foreign consultants I’ve worked with have been older than 35. And then there’s me. Brandon Taylor. Age: 25.

When I started at Beijing Review, I was 22, an unheard of age for a foreign expert. At the time the magazine was desperate to fill one of its foreign editor positions. I had no professional experience, but I spoke English. That was good enough for them.

My first day in the office I made the mistake of telling people my real age. Some of the Chinese staff immediately began looking down on me. I was just a kid. I was no foreign expert.

It was true. I was a kid, and definitely not an expert, but I learned quick and established a solid reputation at the magazine as a hard worker. I also learned to lie about my age. For the rest of that year, and the two following, I was 25. When I would let my beard grow, I passed as 30.

Having reached this age, I can see the appeal of turning 25. By this point, most people have added experience to their professional and social resumes. Some are married; some have families. And some are still trying to find themselves or get their lives on track.

When the People’s Republic was 25, in 1974, the country was in the late stages of the nearly decade-long Cultural Revolution, a tumultuous time where unchecked nationalism caused the destruction of thousands of historic buildings and relics and almost tore the nation apart. When the country’s great helmsman Mao Zedong died in 1976, the madness ended and a new era was ushered in with Deng Xiaoping and his reform and opening-up policy two years later.

Today, the country is a much different place.

I guess I can be glad the most drama I have in my life right now is paying off college loans and worrying about whether I will start going bald, following in dear old dad’s footsteps, any time soon.

PHOTO CAPTION: Guards stand by the perimeter of Tiananmen Square as a large red lantern shines brightly in commemoration of the People’s Republic of China’s 62nd anniversary. The large red lantern, and 20 million potted plants scattered around the city, replaced the enormous hammer and sickle that was placed in the square in July to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.

A gorge is a gorge is a gorge

2011-07-17T09:06:00.000-04:00

In yet another exciting adventure of foreigners being herded into a giant bus and shuttled to the outskirts of Beijing, we non-Chinese workers at CIPG, Beijing Review's parent group, and a few Chinese interpreters found ourselves outside the barrier of the capital city's perpetual smog. The skies were clear, the sun shining (and my skin burning) as we enjoyed a field trip -- which even at the age of 25 are still amusing -- to Longqing Gorge and Yeya Lake.

But, there was a catch, as there always is when the Chinese treat us to an all expenses paid excursion. Not only would we be visiting these locales, we were expected to photograph them as part of a photo competition for foreigners. The Chinese (in general, not just those on our trip) and their super duper high tech cameras were excluded from participating. This was a relief, since my rinky-dink little Canon 500D is no match for the awesomeness of Canon 5Ds or 7Ds or the firepower of most upper model Nikons.

The gorge was impressive. To reach the river portion we had to ascend a staircase in the shape of a dragon, walking through its bowels to reach the peak. A small boat ferried us up and down the reaches of a small river running between the intricately carved mountains that formed the rocky throughway. Then we had to get out and walk, a not so fun turn of events since i was beginning to enjoy the cool gorge river breeze.

We then stopped by a polo club, for reasons unknown, to enjoy a light snack of tea and biscuits, or as we in the States properly call them, cookies.

Then it was off to Yeya Lake, which means Wild Duck Lake. The lake was wild only in the sense that the ducks were tethered to poles out in the middle of the lake. Actually, they seemed quite tame, briskly walking past foreigners and quaking loudly, as if to say "HEY! I'm waddlin here! I'm waddlin here" before snapping their beaks at someone's leg. A few were brave enough to allow a foreign to pick them up for a photo op. And when someone brought out a bag of biscuits, ahem, cookies, the pond, quite literally, went wild with ducks scrambling over one another to get a quick treat.

I do enjoy these infrequent chances to get outside the city on the company's dime. They could have said we were going Beijing's enormous, and almost never seen, garbage relocation facilities (that's what they call them here) and I still would have been excited. It's a chance to see a different part of China -- and, more importantly, to learn how to use my 500D. Cameras these days are so complicated.

The Party's Party

2011-07-09T08:09:00.004-04:00

I finally made it down to Tiananmen Square to see the decorations the Communist Party of China had put in place for its own birthday -- which was last week, July 1. I'd have visited sooner, but I was too preoccupied with choosing a place to celebrate a more important birthday: America's, on July 4 (it was good, by the way -- burgers and beer, what could be more American?).

This year, the Party turned 90. For such a momentous occasion -- there aren't that many communist parties left that can boast the kind of success, at least economically speaking, that the CPC can -- I'd expected there to be the same revelry and in the streets celebrating like there was for 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. But alas, no fireworks. My Chinese colleagues were amused when I asked if we got the day off. Silly foreigner, holidays are for special occasions.

I would have enjoyed watching a few hundred Chinese dressed in red singing the national anthem and condemning capitalism at one of the gala events at the Great Hall of the People but I somehow managed to get left off the VIP list. Maybe they'll remember me for the big shebang centennial celebration in 2021.

RED AND BLUE: I'm not sure what's more impressive about this photo: the giant hammer and sickle or those blue skies

CATS!

2011-06-15T05:00:00.001-04:00

As diverse as Yunnan was -- one region having almost no similarities to its neighbors -- one thing was common: there were cats everywhere.

In Beijing, most of the cats I cross paths with are strays, living outdoors and hissing whenever we meet. The few indoor cats I've seen belong to foreigners.

My Chinese colleagues explained that since ancient times cats have been revered for their hunting skills -- they keep rodents out of houses and can pretty much take care of themselves -- but also feared since they are believed to sometimes be possessed by evils spirits. They can also detect evil spirits, so I guess that's a plus too.

In Yunnan, rats and mice were few, so these feline guardians must have been doing their jobs.

CAT IN KUNMING: Our hostel in Kunming had three cats, two of which volunteered to help eat my cheeseburger at dinner

CAT PERSON: Our guesthouse in Lijiang also had a cat, which quickly discovered that I was a cat person and promptly plopped down on my lap

CAT NAP: I woke this cat up from a mid-afternoon nap in Jinghong

MOUNTAIN CAT: Our guesthouse in the Tiger Leaping Gorge had two cats and two dogs -- and no rodents

TEMPLE CAT: At one of the Tibet temples in Shangri-la this little grey watched over the temple grounds

BUDDHIST CAT: The Tibettan family we visited didn't have much in terms of furniture, but they had a cat to keep out pests

MONK IN TRAINING? At Songzanlin Temple in Shangri-la we ran into this grey cat, a rather plump fellow. My guess is that if the temple had any mice or rats, that problem had now been solved

Days 8-10: I Dream of Dali

2011-06-02T08:27:00.000-04:00

FRIDAY, April 29 - SUNDAY, May 1

Dali: Where dreams come true. The local government of Dali should get a move on copyrighting that slogan, or simply copying it from whoever has a similar saying (I think Disney has something involving the words “dreams come true”).

At least for me, this was the part of the trip I’d been waiting for and dreading at the same time. Dali is the first stop for most backpackers once they move outside Kunming, the provincial capital, so naturally it’s a land of tourist traps and Chinese chicanery. The local sightseeing spots would be overpriced, large groups of Chinese and foreigners visiting the area with travel companies would be a given, and every vendor and cab driver would be looking for a way to screw Layla, my travel partner, and myself out of as much yuan as possible. My predictions would all hold true.

Despite these three factors that all but guaranteed a disappointing stay, Dali turned out to be the highpoint of the trip for one main reason: the locals. Yes, most of Dali catered to Western travelers’ needs for burgers, beer and comfortable lodging, but a quick bus ride outside the old city center showed a different picture. Fields of wheat and water logged rice paddies spread out all around Dali, each area filled with people tending the crops or knee deep in mud. From sun up to sun down, they worked. This was what I wanted to see: people at work in the fields and farms.

MANUAL LABOR: Despite Dali’s massive tourist industry, most people still make a living by living off the land. In the other parts of Yunnan we’d visited, Layla and I saw few people doing any type of physical labor – most of the people in the old cities and towns we visited were more focused on begging us for money or trying to peddle worthless junk on us.

LUNCH BREAK: Finally, someone wearing those iconic saucer-shaped Asian field working hats besides tourists at the Great Wall.

RICE PADDIES GALORE: I’ve lived in China for more than two years now and have eaten countless bowls of rice. Until visiting Dali I had yet to see where the bland white pieces of grain that accompany every meal were grown.

SAY “QIE ZI”: The people in the fields were al l smiles whenever they saw me taking photos – a farcry from people in other areas of Yunnan who refused to let me take photos of them or their property. In China, instead of saying “cheese”, they use the word “qie zi”, which means eggplant. Saying qiezi (pronounced chee-eh-dzuh) causing your mouth to form a small smile in the same way that saying cheese does

WORKING FOR GLORIOUS NATION: Small paths allowed me to walk among the people as they worked. This was what I’d been waiting for the whole trip since I wanted to test out different features on my new camera involving the zoom, aperture and shutter speed functions.

LOCAL ARCHITECTURE: The buildings in the villages around the main city Dali featured white walls, some with interesting Chinese paintings on them. The cleanliness of the villages was impressive – most communities I’d seen on other parts of the trip fell well within the category of “third world”.

HELPING HAND OR IGNORANT FOREIGNER?: Nothing says “Yeah, I’m a tourist” like walking across someone’s field uninvited for a quick photo. Note the redness of my face: the after effect of two days in ozone-lacking Shangri-la.

HARVESTING…SOMETHING: Not exactly sure what these farmers are harvesting.

NO RULES ON THESE ROAD: Almost every backcountry truck I saw looked like this: no hood, or front of the vehicle for that matter, and engine visibly revving.

WHAT THE…?: Based on the mixed reactions from a few of the locals I ran into, I got the distinct feeling foreigners didn’t venture through their villages too often. Such was the case with a few of the kids – the one above just couldn’t seem to figure out where this white-skinned, camera totting being had come from.

THESE OLD ALLEYS: Walking through the villages away from the hordes of tourists was relaxing, despite having to cover a good mile or so to get from the main freeway from Dali to said village.

BOILING THE ZAZA: One of the hot tourist items in the Dali area are zazas, tie-dyed cloths with white embroidery. The cloths are boiled in large vats of molten dye and then set out to dry.

PREPARING THE ZAZA: Layla and I stopped by a small shop where the zazas are made. Huge piles were littered about, waiting to have fish, insects or birds stitched in.

SELLING THE ZAZA: The owner of the shop shows one of the completed zazas. She wanted 600RMB (about $90) for this one, but I opted to buy a smaller, cheaper one. The owner said it usually takes one person up to a day to stitch one of the larger zazas.

OF COURSE, A TEMPLE: No Chinese city is without a temple or pagoda of some sort. Dali had both. Congshen Temple and Three Pagodas sit at the base of the Cangshan mountains to Dali’s west.

FAMILIAR LOOK: The Congshen Temple resembled Beijing’s Forbidden City, the roofs orange and the architecture traditional and angular. The backdrop of the Chongshen Temple is much more appealing than the Forbidden City – instead of clouds of smog, Dali only had natural clouds swirling around the mountain’s peak.

FEED ME: The ponds at the Congshen temple were filled with hungry fish.

DIN, DIN: Layla feeds the fish.

SEEING DOUBLE: Close up of a statue near the main building at the temple.

PLACE OF WORSHIP: Throughout the temple, tourists stopped to bow and worship certain statues to the gods or ancient prophets and historical figures.

MAIN WORSHIP HALL: Congshen temple slowly works its way up the base of the mountain, with each section at a higher elevation than the previous.

OFFERS OF INCENSE: Sticks of incense burn at the main temple hall.

UP INTO THE MOUNTAINS: Congshen temple extends up into the Cangshan mountains.

THREE PAGODAS: These three pagodas built in the Tang Dynasty are about 1,200 years old.

STANDARD TOURIST SHOT: The Three Pagodas and Cangshan Mountain.

WEEKEND MARKET: After walking around the Three Pagodas and temple area, Layla and I made out way back to the main road. Aside from the sounds of honking trucks and traffic, another sound had filled the air: beating drums, chimes, the shucka-shucka of maracas and banshee-like wails. The source of the cacophony was a weekend market and outdoor festivities of one of the minority groups. Alongside the main highway, people cooked food over open flames, played instruments and sang songs that I’m convinced were meant to ward off evil spirits and maybe foreigners.

WEIRD BRUNCH: I can only guess what this woman was making, but doing so may give me a stomachache.

ONE HAT, TWO HAT: A group of minority women look at hats at the market.

ANOTHER OLD VILLAGE: Not a Walmart, McDonald’s, KFC or shopping mall in sight. Perfect.

DALI: Layla and I took a chairlift into the Cangshan Mountains to get a better view of Dali Old City and the entire lake area.

MINORITY DANCE: Layla and I fell right into this tourist trap: a Bai minority group tourist attraction that had “authentic Bai dance, authentic Bai tea, authentic Bai experience.” The tea, a sweet blend of sugar and a locally grown leaves, was great (and unfortunately not for sale). The “experience”… not so great, but at least it got us out of the sun for a while.

OUT ON ERHAI: After seeing most of the major sights, visiting a few outlying villages and walking through countless fields, Layla and I decided to use our third day in Dali to take a relaxing cruise on Erhai, or Ear-shaped Lake. Erhai is one of the largest lakes in China at 24 miles long and 5 miles wide.

KIND OF LIKE “LOST”: The cruise ship stopped at two islands in Erhai to allow the tourists to shop at a few local markets and take some photos. The one island had a large statue that reminded me of the hit TV show “LOST”, although I was glad I wouldn’t be stuck on this island with the sea of Chinese tourists pushing and shoving me out of the way to get a photo.

NOTHING BUT BLUE SKIES: One of the best parts about Dali, and Yunnan in general, were the blue skies. As exciting as life in Beijing can be, the layers of smog and filth in the air are just downright depressing. But not in Dali – here, the clouds stretch off as far as the eye can see, over mountains and across Erhai.

ON THE ISLAND: The heart shaped necklace was the “ticket” for our cruise ship. Each ship gave its passengers a different colored heart so people on the island didn’t get on the wrong ship, which all went to the same final port anyway.

Days 6-7: Finding Shangri-la

2011-05-26T05:40:00.000-04:00

WEDNESDAY, April 27 - THURSDAY, April 28

Shangri-la: Where the air is thin, the mountains are beautiful and the tourist attractions are just above average. Granted, I was only in Shangri-la for two days, and what I did see was amazing, but not as amazing as other travelers had made it seem. The important part about visiting this part of Yunnan was to see Tibetan culture.

Although located outside the Tibet Autonomous Region, Shangri-la lies on the Tibetan Plateau, ergo the influence of Tibetan culture in this part of Yunnan. At 3,300 meters (about 10,827 feet) above sea level, a quick walk up even the smallest of hills in Shangri-la left me winded.

What's even more interesting than the fact that I didn't even feel like I was in Yunnan anymore -- gone were the jungles; gone were the gorges -- was that this city and area haven't always been called Shangri-la. Up until about a decade ago, it was Zhongdian. To capitalize on that magnetic effect naming a town or region after a famous fictional locale – in this case, British novelist James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon” -- has on tourists, the Chinese Government changed the city’s name to Shangri-la (San-ge-li-la in Chinese) in 2001. And it worked – Shangri-la has seen a tourist and backpacker boom in recent years, especially for those who can’t afford an actual trip to Tibet.

Yunnan isn’t alone in claiming that its Shangri-la is the Shangri-la. Authorities in Pakistan, Tibet, other Chinese provinces, and just about anywhere in the Himalayan region say this mythical city of everlasting youth is within their borders.

Whatever you want to call it, I was here to see Tibetans and enjoy the local cuisine: yak dumplings, yak kebabs, yak steak, yak cetera.

TIBETAN RETREAT: To get a nice panoramic view of the city, Layla, my travel companion, and I had to hike up a small hill not far from our guesthouse in Shangri-la’s Old City. Nestled between small, barren hills, Shangri-la looked like an oasis of civilization among desolate surroundings. Larger mountains loomed off in the distance. The sun was hidden behind a sea of clouds. The air was cool, if a bit thin, because of Shangri-la’s altitude, which made it both enjoyable and cumbersome while hiking. The city’s old town stood out from the modernized sections, the taller buildings of new overlooking the cozy village of old.

BLOWING IN THE WIND: At the top of the hill, hundreds of ropes with rainbow colored flags blew in the wind. The flags are used to bless a certain area. Each flag bears an inscription, which the Tibetans believe will be carried away by the winds to spread peace and good fortune. They’re commonly found around religious sites – sure enough, our flags led us to a temple. The smell of incense was also a dead giveaway.

THESE ANCIENT STREETS: The old city was busy with people, but mostly locals. Foreigners were few. Layla and I found a nice Tibetan restaurant – with a sign that announced “Tibetan food here!” – and I enjoyed some good Tibetan beer, which was much better than the Mekong beer from Jinghong, and yak a le everything (as described before) with noodles or rice. The Tibetans obsession with yak meat reminded me of Xinjiang, where all dishes include mutton cooked one way or another. I also have to laugh at the Chinese word for yak, maoniu, which means “hairy cow.”

DANCING THE EVENING AWAY: At 5 o’clock every evening, the locals of the old city get together in one of the city squares and perform a few traditional Tibetan dances. Audience participation was encouraged.

OLD TRADITION: The old city was nice for shopping – I picked up a few bags of yak jerky for my colleagues in Beijing – and people watching, especially the old ladies dancing in the square (pictured above), but Layla and I wanted to see some of the outlying areas where authentic Tibetan culture was almost certainly rife. We found a small travel group and hired a guide to take us on a culture themed trek to some villages and a temple outside Shangri-la.

WICKED SPIRITS NOT WELCOME HERE: The first Tibetan structure we ran into was a stupa, an all-white, man-made construction that looked like a swirly ice cream, on top of a small hill. Stupas, our guide said, are built to ward off evil spirits. If a disaster occurs somewhere – in the case of the stupa before us, there was a mudslide a few years ago that killed some people – a stupa is built to deter evil spirits from returning and causing similar destruction.

BIG MISTAKE: About 10 minutes into the hike, Layla and I, already wheezing and panting due to the thinner air of Shangri-la which makes physical activities exponentially more difficult, looked at each other, our thoughts aligning: Why the hell had we picked another trek after finishing the Tiger Leaping Gorge the day before? Surely this could have been done by bus or cab, but maybe the thin air had made us a bit light headed when we paid the travel guide before venturing out.

YAK, YAK, YAK: We walked on through hills and valleys, all void of any green life aside from a few shrubs. A few times, a random yak would stumble onto our path and grunt a few times at us. We must have been intruding on his turf. We passed small farming villages, although I couldn’t tell what was being farmed given the desolate terrain.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME: We took a pit stop in village not far from the temple to have yak butter tea and yak milk cheese. Although my stomach churned at the very mention of these local “delicacies,” I knew declining the food and beverage would be rude. I was also interested in seeing the inside of one of the houses and meet a Tibetan family.

ONE COW TOWN: At the two villages we passed through, there were more farm animals around than people.

THE SIMPLE LIFE: It took a while, but our guide finally found a family willing to allow foreigners into their house. Like the landscape outside, there wasn’t much to the house’s interior. There was one room with a large wooden pole in the middle. The floors, also wood, were uncarpeted. A large cast iron stove sat in the corner with two wooden benches. And that was about it. A TV that was almost definitely too old to work, and certainly black and white.

HUMBLE HOSTS: The Tibetan family, three women (the eldest pictured above) and a newborn child, rolled out their best wooden couch mats for us to sit on. A few neighbors (the younger woman in the photo) stopped by to see these foreign oddities who were so interested in walking from Shangri-la to see their small village. They served us yak butter milk tea and yak cheese, which I nibbled sparingly. I held the tea cup in my hands, moving it to my mouth every so often to create the facade of drinking. I smiled frequently. The Tibetans didn’t smile back. I felt invasive, but this was part of the tour package we’d paid for, so I sat contently.

SCORCHED SKIN: When we finally left the house, my face had started to hurt. An after effect of the yak cheese? Unlikely. It must be sunburn, but to what extent I didn’t know. Later, when I looked at photos I noticed my face was beet red. The sun hadn’t been shining that day, but I thought back to a few guide reviews. Sunscreen had been recommended because of Shangri-la’s altitude, which has an effect on the sun’s intensity since the ozone is apparently thinner. That would explain why most Tibetans are an earthen brown: their skin has been permanently tanned by the unrelenting sun.

PIGGING OUT: This shot caught my eye – a herd (is that the right term?) of hogs lying out in one of the pastures near our temple destination. I’ve only even seen these creatures in pens, never freely roaming about like other farm animals. Only in Shangri-la.

ALLEGEDLY FAMOUS: This “famous” temple we had been trekking to turned out to be a complete bust of a tourist spot. We’d been warned that it was being renovated, not that it was being completely reconstructed. The temple had no roof, three walls and didn’t really look like a former temple at all. And, of course, there were pigs wandering around inside. For the rest of my life I will remember Shangri-la, not for its beauty and simplicity or the Tibetan culture, but as that place, that one place, where hogs roam free.

SIGHTSEEING REDEMPTION: Our travels in Shangri-la were redeemed after we stopped at the Songzanlin monastery, the largest of its kind in Yunnan, on our way back into the city.

MONKS IN TRAINING: At its most prosperous time, the monastery was home to more than 3,000 monks. Today, there far fewer.

LIMITED PHOTO OPS: Taking photos in many parts of the monastery was off limits, especially since Songzanlin is still an active place of worship and Buddhist monk training.

TEMPLE HERE, TEMPLE THERE: Two main worship halls featured massive Buddha statues and the portraits of famous Buddhist monks. Each had a façade with beautiful white stone and red brick and bronze roofs; a giant tapestry hung at the entrance with different characters woven into the fabric.

LIKE TIBET, BUT DIFFERENT: Songzanlin monastery resembles the famous Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, and houses many Buddhist and Tibetan treasures, hundreds of small gold statues of the Buddha among the main attractions.

BEWARE OF BUDDHAS: I’m a firm believer in not messing around with powers I have no understanding of, so needless to say I did not harm any Buddhas while in Shangri-la

Days 4-5: Tiger Leaping Gorge

2011-05-20T05:41:00.000-04:00

MONDAY, April 25- TUESDAY, April 26

There’s been few times in my life where I’ve actually had my breath taken away (Yes, I am succumbing to a cliché for this case). Standing atop a rock formation jutting out into the Tiger Leaping Gorge, with a view up and down the length of the vast chasm, was one of those instances. Maybe it was the scenery, the sun setting over an awe-inspiring landscape on loan from heaven, or maybe it was the fact that I’d been trekking for the better part of day – either way, the air in my lungs had been temporarily stolen from me. Then out came my camera and roughly 50 shots later I was ready to move on.

LEGENDARY BEAST: The Tiger Leaping Gorge, located in China’s northwest Yunnan, is a backpacker’s dreamland. One of the deepest river canyons in the world, the gorge is 14 miles of green hills, snowcapped mountains and rugged paths, with rugged trails, cozy villages and waterfalls along the way. The gorge gets its name from a legendary tiger that, while evading hunters, jumped over the gorge at its narrowest point, which is about 100 feet.

VALLEY VILLAGES: Trekking the gorge at an enjoyable pace, if you like stopping to smell the cherry blossom flowers or visit each village, can take up to three days. Layla, my travel companion, and I would only be spending two days in the gorge at a much less leisurely walking pace. We’d leave our guesthouse in Lijiang early in the morning, arrive at a base town two hours later and begin the trek by about noon.

THE JOURNEY BEGINS: But like all things in China – chaotic and disorganized – our plan quickly fell apart due to a lack of buses, a lack of bus tickets and a lack of signs at the bus station. When we finally arrived at the base town it was pushing 2 in the afternoon. We finally got trekking around 3 p.m. after checking our larger bags at a nearby hostel. We’ll just have to walk faster, Layla and I agreed. That was a mistake.

OVERESTIMATED, BIG TIME: We started out strong, walking confidently toward the gorge on relatively stable terrain, but once we hit dirt trails and had to maneuver over boulders our pace slowed with each step. The second biggest problem was ourselves: we’d misjudged our physical capabilities since neither of us was in trekking shape. At this rate, and with my frequent breaks to stop and photograph everything around me, we wouldn’t make it to the gorge’s peak before sunset, let alone the village and guesthouses an hour beyond that. Trekking at night was out of the question. One wrong step in the dark could send us over a cliff – and then who would update this blog? Lucky for us, the cavalry was about to arrive.

RUGGED TRAILS ROLL ON AND ON: Since leaving the town at the bottom of the gorge, two men on horseback (or maybe they were mules) had followed us. They had offered to take us to the peak, for a fee but on horseback it would only take about two hours. We wanted to walk the “real way” and said no thanks.

OUR FOUR-LEGGED SHADOWS: But the duo followed anyway. Their horses were equipped with small bells on each saddle. As we went up steep hills, the bells would jingle; as we traversed rocky terrain, more jingling. There was, literally, jingling all the way as we made our way through the gorge. Jingle, jingle, jingle – it was the sound of our salvation. After about two hours of hiking on our own, and now covered in sweat and through half our water supply, we had a change of heart.

ON HORSEBACK, TIGER GORGE NOT SO HARD: Once on horseback with the two horsemen now guiding each animal on foot, we reached the peak in about two hours (it probably would have taken four or five hours otherwise), shot off another hundred photos, and made it to the village as the sun retreated behind the snow-covered peaks nearby.

On the way up to the peak, out of curiosity and now feeling like an epic failure of a traveler, I asked our guides how many times they made this trek each week. If there were travelers, one of them said, sometimes every day. Then he pulled out a cigarette, his third of the day, and lit up before pulling on the horse’s reins to move on. That’s a helluva cardio workout, I thought to myself.

RISE AND SHINE: The next morning we got up early before the afternoon heat could slow us down again. A mostly downhill trek, the second half was much easier. Since we didn’t have to rush, we were able to stop and enjoy the scenery around us.

THE PEOPLE AT WORK: Along the trail, people were busy harvesting wheat and other crops. Flowers were in bloom.

CURIOUS OBSERVER: At each sleepy town we passed we were greeted by a few farm animals, mostly chickens and horses, wandering around unattended to.

REFRESHING DISTRACTION: We passed a waterfall whose waters flowed over the path and into a ravine. The slippery rocks made it difficult to pass, but the cool waters were a nice refresher to keep us going.

MAYBE NEXT TIME: On the opposite side of the gorge was the Snow Dragon mountain. This part of the gorge was much less accessible than the side we were on.

ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE: Three hours later, we reached the main road through the gorge and were reconnected with civilization. A group of foreigners were trying to get a bus back to a nearby town and we decided to hitch a ride too.

IMPRESSIVE, MOST IMPRESSIVE: While a tourist hotspot, the Tiger Leaping Gorge is by no means touristy. True, there was a toll to pay before entering the gorge and the two prime photo spots were guarded by aged locals who demanded a fee of about $2 per person, but the natural beauty and lack of Chinese tour buses compensated for the few minor inconveniences of the trip.

R&R: The journey through the gorge is a great place to do some soul searching, even if you think you haven’t lost yours. Stuck out there among the trees, blowing wind and winding trails had a rejuvenating effect on me. While physically exhausting, at the end of our first day I felt relaxed and comfortable, perhaps enjoying a nice hiker’s high. I slept soundly and woke up re-energized to finish the trek.

LONG WAY DOWN: Yes, the trek was fun, but the Tiger Leaping Gorge is no joke. Certain points in the trail were as narrow as three feet with a sharp drop off waiting to one side. Each year, a dozen travelers die while hiking here, but it’s easy to see why. There are just way too many spots that, while dangerous, would make for great new Facebook profile pics.

SO TOURISTY: But I couldn't resist a few of those "dangerous" shots myself.

THE WIRES: The only annoyance was wires reaching across various sections of the gorge (note the wire in the upper left hand corner of this photo). These villages may have been small and isolated but were by no means completely disconnected from the outside world. The cables ruined a few too many of my shots and I had to maneuver myself into better photographic positions without falling off the sides of cliffs.

SECOND BEST: As an added bonus, I got to see the second bend of the Yangtze River during the trek. The second bend -- not as exciting or interesting as the first bend, but just as brown.

Evening, Day 3: Passing Through Lijiang

2011-05-14T05:33:00.016-04:00

SUNDAY, April 24

The next leg of our trip would have Layla and me dropping into a few places in northwest Yunnan. To get there we'd have to take a plane -- a bus would take about a day and after our experience on the night bus from Kunming to Jinghong we wanted to expedite the whole traveling from A to B process. We also wanted to get away from Jinghong as quickly as possible.

As we flew into Lijiang I saw trails of lights from the air. It looked like the airport but we were still too high up to make a proper landing. On the ride into the city I saw what they were: it was a highway, with tall lightpoles running down each side for miles and miles. Our driver said the government was pouring millions, if not billions, of RMB into the city to bring it up to speed with other parts of China. One day there would be highrises and houses, malls and other department stores. But for now, there was only lights.

The ride to Lijiang's old city took the better part of an hour. The airport was built way out in the boonies and to get to our hostel we had to drive over barely paved roads, then pure dirt roads. Reminded me of off roading back in Pennsylvania's Coal Region, except slightly less comfortable since my ride was a low riding cab instead of a Jeep Wrangler.

Like most cities in China, Lijiang has an "old" city. I'm sure at one point it was a nice, peaceful little place, but now it's full of hostels, bars and tourists looking to spend money on local knick knacks.

Since we were just passing through, we didn't have time, or space in our bags, to fill up on LIjiang snacks and whatnot. The next day we'd be heading to the Tiger Leaping Gorge north of the old city.

Days 2-3 - Welcome to the Jungle

2011-05-10T10:27:00.000-04:00

SATURDAY, APRIL 23 - SUNDAY, APRIL 24
The sun was shining in through the bus' massive windows as we rolled along. The ride the night before had been harsh but as I looked out I was welcomed by a pleasant scene: tropical trees and shrubs. Welcome to the jungle, I thought.

Sadly, this part of the trip wasn’t all fun and games. I thought because Jinghong, in the Xishuangbanna region, was located far from Yunnan’s other major tourist spots in the north that it would be more real, more rugged and less touristy. I was wrong, very wrong, on all counts.

The first downer was our visit to a botanical garden near Menglun, two hours east of Jinghong. Lonely Planet and a few online travel sites I consulted beforehand alleged that this was one of the most beautiful in the region and had a wild array of tropical flora and fauna. It wasn't and it didn't. Most of the flowers were dead or dying. Their color and energy was all but lost –like my feelings for Xishuangbanna, which was quickly failing to impress. The only exotic animal I saw was a small lizard. Another animal howled at me from a distance but never revealed itself.

On our way back to Jinghong, we stopped in Menghan to see a Dai minority park. Yunnan is home to 25 of China’s 55 minority groups. The Dai are prominent in Xishuangbanna.

“Park” definitely wasn’t the best word for this place -- it was more like a minority zoo. The only difference was the minority “attractions” here could come and go as they pleased and probably weren’t going to try to eat us.

Zoo similarities aside, a re-enactment of the Dai’s water splashing festival brightened up the overall dreary and depressing atmosphere of minority exploitation.

The faux festival began calmly enough with Dai men and women clothed in a vibrant menagerie of red, blue, green and yellow dresses splashing rose petals dipped in water on everyone’s arm. This was the good luck part. The group then moved into a shallow pool surrounding a large water fountain, picked up small plastic containers and began splashing about. The water spiraled into the air and the faces of anyone within close enough proximity to the festivities.

The next day we visited what was described as a “real rainforest,” an out of the way park not many tourists knew about. Maybe this would be fun.

Wrong again.

The forest preserve was packed with loud, camera-totting Chinese tourists who took just as many pictures of me – a wild and exotic specimen if ever they saw one– as they did of the plants and trees. And since it was located next to a major highway, my fascination with the trees and lagoons was frequently interrupted by the honking of cars and trucks as they whizzed by. On top of that, the weather was a bit on the torrential side, which didn’t bother me that much since I was, after all, in a rainforest. It just slowed my ability to take lots of photos.

Part of the preserve eventually wound off into thicker jungle away from the freeway and mob of tourists. The path followed a small stream and eventually wound its way up a hill that provided a stunning view of the lower canopy of the rainforest and the ravine below.

After two days in Jinghong, I was soaked, over my budget and without a single photo of a wild monkey (I was promised wild monkeys by guidebooks and friends). But I was still glad to have trudged through the rainforest. I'll just go and check that off my list of things to do while in China.

GREEN TREES, GREEN WATER: The water in photos of the main lagoon looked a lot cleaner on websites I looked at while planning the JInghong portion of my trip. The waters in this not quite black lagoon looked murky enough to be hiding a creature or two

SPRING HAS SPRUNG: A lush rainbow array of flowers were the centerpiece of the gardens -- too bad most of them were in pretty bad condition, mostly drooping and looking like they were on the verge of completely losing their color

ME AND THE MEKONG: To get into the botanical garden, we had to cross a long suspension bridge over the Mekong River, called the Lancang in Chinese

TREE OF LIFE: This giant ficus was one of thousands of trees at the botanical garden. It also happened to have a "Danger! Poison!" sign hanging nearby, so I refrained from attempting to climb it

RANDOM TEMPLE: Gold temples like this were scattered about the countryside in Xishuangbanna -- places of worship for Buddhists

DAI HOUSES: The basements of each Dai house were open air, with the living quarters elevated. I'm assuming this is because heavy rains would otherwise flood the lower floors of each house

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE: In Dai culture, water symbolizes purity or the ability to wash away the past and start anew. Splashing water is a gesture of goodwill toward one’s family, friends, neighbors or anyone who happens to get in the way of a water-filled bowl

HIGH FIVE BUDDHA: Xishuangbanna is a Buddhist-dominant region, although more in line with Southeast Asian buddhism as opposed to Tibetan buddhism

IT'S ELEPHANT TIME: China may be known as the land of the dragons, but Xishuangbanna is elephant country. Elephant statues, elephant carvings and elephant chairs were all over the place -- the only thing I had a hard time finding were actual elephants

BAD MONKEY: This monkey was one of three jungle animals I saw during my two days in Jinghong. As I walked past, he tried to grab my shirt and I was quick to move away, given his bloodshot eyes and weird stare

GO AWAY: A torrential downpour added to the effect of walking through the jungle at a rainforest preserve outside Jinghong. It rained, and rained, and rained some more. A pair of shoes was ruined and my backpack and our Lonely Planet guide got soaked, but the photos were worth it

IN THE JUNGLE: An elephant stands guard over the entrance to the rainforest preserve

MY NEW BFF: For 10 kuai (about $2) I got to feed this strange monkey-squirrel looking thing a piece of banana on a stick

Day 1: Kunming and the Night Bus from Hell

2011-05-06T07:41:00.000-04:00

FRIDAY, APRIL 22

We hadn’t even landed in Kunming, Yunnan's capital, but I knew I wouldn’t like the city. From the air, a thick layer of smog lay over the city. Once in a taxi, Kunming looked just like Beijing – big buildings, too many people, and pollution. Since I wanted a break from the big city life, getting out of Kunming was priority No. 1.

The first destination of my 10-day trip to Yunnan with travel companion Layla was Jinghong in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, the province’s southern most region located next to Laos and Myanmar. Getting to Jinghong could be done in two ways: by plane or by bus.

A plane ticket would cost 1,500 RMB (a little over $200) but an overnight bus ticket was only 260 RMB ($35). I opted for the latter. Taking a train was out -- Jinghong is located in an undeveloped region that the rails have yet to reach.

The bus itself wasn't bad. Each ticket got you a little bed (bed may be an overstatement, mini coffin is more accurate) while the bus made it way south to Jinghong. My bed was located next to a small room, which I assumed to be the bathroom. I checked the door, but it was locked. I guessed we'd be stopping for bathroom breaks along the way.

We left around 9 p.m. and I fell asleep almost instantly. But around midnight i was awoken by a pounding at the door of the bus bathroom. Someone had to go and was trying to get in. With no luck, the banging stopped -- and then I heard another sound; a trickling sound. The person, a guy, was taking a leak on the bathroom door, a few feet from where I was sleeping.

Needless to say, I found it difficult to sleep after that. Worse still, I too had to use the bathroom and ended up waiting another hour and a half before we stopped at a rest station.

I eventually regained interest in falling asleep and before long the sun was rising over the rice fields and jungle of Xishuangbanna.

OLD CITY, NEW STUFF: The Old City of Kunming was more like a souped up tourist shopping area. The only thing old about it were the people within. Most of the souvenirs were knock-offs of popular Western brands

RANDOM TEMPLE: An old Southeast Asian looking temple was found in the middle of the Old City

THE LOCALS: I wasn't too impressed with Kunming, but I did enjoy watching city elders walking around the Old City area. Note the blue hat and clothes, the same that people wore during Chairman Mao's years in China

OVERNIGHT BEDS: Each bed was just big enough for one person -- one Chinese person that is. I found myself cramped and unable to sleep properly, especially after one of the other passengers found it necessary to relieve himself on the bus door before we reached a rest station

GOOD TO GO: I may be giving a thumbs up before we left the station, but by the end of the journey I definitely had to give the experience a thumbs down. The only thing that would have made the situation worse was if there had been more smokers on the bus

A Journey South of the Clouds

2011-05-04T07:21:00.003-04:00

I've been told that if I was going to visit one place in China, before all others, it should be Yunnan (which means south of the clouds in Chinese). The province is home to almost three quarters of China's minority groups. From snow capped mountains to lush jungles, vast plains and large gorges, Yunnan has it all.

For 11 days, my former girlfriend, Layla, and I hiked, rode and flew across the province -- from Jinghong near the border with Myanmar and Laos, to the old cities of Lijiang and Dali and even the Tibertan region around Shangri-la, located near the lower reaches of the Himalayan Mountains.

Some places were a bit touristy, others just as wild and untouched by commercialization as they've been for hundreds of years, but everything was impressive. I can vouch for that based on the number of gifts I bought and photos I took (somewhere around 1,500).

Getting Ready for Another Great Adventure

2011-04-22T02:46:00.001-04:00

Adventure hat. Check.

Brand new Canon 500D with 15 mega pixels, 200mm lens, and lots of other features I'm still trying to figure out how to use. Check.

Lonely Planet guide, without which I would be totally lost and never heard from again. Check.

I'm off today on another adventure in China. Last year, I visited Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This year, I'll be journeying south to Yunnan Province, a region that borders Vietnam and Myanmar. For 11 days I'll wander around the province, from jungles to mountains and even the border area with Tibet. Check for posts and pictures sometime in May.

Celebrity on a Train

2011-04-15T06:46:00.002-04:00

It was just another Monday morning as I rode Line 2 toward Fuchengmen, the closest subway station to my office. I had just missed the morning rush and a few empty seats near the end of the bench awaited my still sleepy body. With headphones firmly planted into each ear, I sat and watched as station after station rolled by.

Somewhere along the line, the empty seats next to and across from me filled up with four older men wearing tattered brown and gray jackets. Their skin was a leathery color, much darker than some of the other people in the subway car; their clothes were a little dirty and they were carrying large duffle bags. Migrant workers, I guessed, or country folk at the least. Their skin tanned from a life of labor under the unforgiving sun.

I stared at my iPod’s screen searching for a new song, but out of the corner of my eye I could see the one guy leaning in close, as if to see what was happening on the tiny screen I was so fixated on. Nearer he drew, a bit too close for comfort actually. Then he stopped his sudden invasion of my personal space. There was a pause, then a flash. I looked up. The man sitting across from me had a camera in his hand and was giving the thumbs up to the one sitting next to me. There was laughing as they looked at the camera’s screen. The guy had taken a photo – and I was the main subject.

A few moments later, a second shooting occurred followed by more laughter from the group. I looked up briefly, smiled and turned my attention back to the iPod. Such is the life of a foreigner in Beijing.

This wasn’t the first time someone had taken my picture, although most of the time I’ll get a slight tap on the shoulder and see a smiling Chinese person holding a camera and motioning me to stand next to someone already posing in front of some landmark or tourist attraction. These discreet, spy-like encounters, while amusing, are uncommon.

In my pre-China preparation two years ago, I’d read these types of requests are fairly common for Western tourists. Often the case, Chinese tourists from the country’s hinterlands where foreigners aren’t so abundant come to big cities like Beijing or Shanghai, see the national landmarks and also run into many of their foreign tourist counterparts. With fancy cameras in hand, many will muster up the courage to tap these pale-complexioned people on the shoulders and ask for a photo.

That was probably the case with my subway encounter: the dark-skinned migrants, probably from a far off province, were taking a photo of chalk-white me to write home about. I could only image the letter or e-mail that would accompany the photo; probably something along the lines of “We saw the strangest thing on the subway today. It was dressed funny, had pasty white skin and had chords coming out of its ear as it stared at this tiny hand-held screen device!”

Or maybe they thought I was [insert name of famous movie star]. Either way, it brightened my morning.

During my first visit to Tiananmen Square, a group of high school age Chinese girls could barely hold back fits of giggles as they asked to have their photo taken with me. I was skeptical at first since I thought they were trying to sell me something but quickly agreed and had someone take a picture of me with the girls as well

Atop the Fragrant Hills outside Beijing, a cool looking Chinese dude wanted a photo with me, looking equally as cool at the time

While traveling in China’s western-most region, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, I stopped to enjoy the scenery of a lake and waterfall and soon found a queue of Chinese tourists admiring me and waiting to have their photo taken with the only foreigner for miles. If I’d charged a fee that time, I could have made an easy 50 kuai ($7)

In Shanghai, a young woman approached me on the Bund next to the Huangpu River and said that I was “very beautiful” before handing her camera off to a friend for a quick pic. She followed her comment with an unexpected “You should remember me forever” but ran off before I could get a name or number

While sitting on the Bund between takes for Beijing Review's Days and Nights in Shanghai DVD project, a young woman walked up and started talking with me. We talked for a while about the project and Shanghai, but I couldn't quite get her to ask me for an autograph

Love Beijing, Love Beijing Not

2011-03-19T03:49:00.000-04:00

Three weeks of vacationing in Tamaqua after an 18-month work stint in Beijing allowed me to get back into an American swing of things. It also had me missing certain aspects of life in Beijing and made me realize there were just some things I could live without, no matter what continent I’m on.

MISSED ABOUT BEIJING
Public Transportation
My commute to work in the morning is made easy by Beijing’s public transportation network. After leaving my apartment, I walk about a half football field’s distance before arriving at my nearest subway entrance, take the train for 15 minutes, then jump on a bus which drops me off right in front of my office. In all, it takes about 40 minutes, most of which is spent waiting for the train or bus. A one-way subway ticket costs about $0.30; bus fares are $0.15.

Bargaining
Nothing beats naming your own price. When shopping in Beijing’s many street markets, where knock-off products are aplenty, you can basically do just that, but not without a fight. The basic assumption among local vendors is that all foreigners are “rich.” As such, they’ll do anything and everything they can to squeeze as much money out of you as possible. Prices are usually inflated 500-700% of what they are worth, so verbally arguing about the cost and quality or showing a sudden disinterest can usually get the price bargained down to something more reasonable.

Tailor-made Clothes
I’ve never been a big fan of clothes shopping. The crowds, lack of desired sizes and time commitment has always been a deterrent to venturing to any mall. The same is true in China, except here those three factors are compounded by the fact that my Mandarin is far below par.

My solution: have most of my clothes tailor made. Tailors are numerous in Beijing, so I can have dress shirts made for the perfect fit at the perfect price, about $14. Tailor-made suits cost around $90, depending on the fabric.

COULD LIVE WITHOUT
Spitting
Many a time I’ve been walking along the streets of Beijing admiring the buildings, people watching and enjoying the weather only to have the moment shattered by a loud ackkkk-tooof as someone gurgles up something from their throat and hawks it to the ground. Yes, I’ve almost been spit on.

Apparently, it’s very therapeutic and good for your health, but it’s also downright disgusting.

Cranky Cab Drivers
I won’t go as far as calling Beijing cab drivers racist, but from time to time they definitely discriminate against foreigners. Too often, open cabs have driven right past me or friends only to stop a few yards away to pick up Chinese passengers. I’ve actually run up to taxis in the process of dropping passengers off and had the driver wave his hand, give me the stink face and then drive down the street to pick up other non-foreign passengers.

From time to time, cab drivers will tell me to get out of their cab after I tell them my desired destination because traffic in that area will be too heavy or they simply don’t want to go to that part of town.

Rush Hour Traffic
Growing up in the calm hills of northeast Pennsylvania, I was never able to experience the chaotic-yet-comfortable big city life. Now I get to feel it every day. The only downside is that come rush hour all 13 million Beijing residents seem to be going exactly where I want to go, which delays me anywhere from 10 minutes to over an hour.

I’ve spent the better part of two years standing while taking the subway in the morning to work, although I’ve started coming in later to avoid the morning rush. And buses feel more like sardine cans on wheels with people smooshed up against the large glass windows.

Smog
The air quality in Beijing at times can be a major pain, especially for someone with allergies as annoying as mine. In the two years of living in Beijing, there have been a noticeable number of days where I’ve just stayed indoors because the sky was an apocalyptic-looking red, brown or gray or I couldn’t see the buildings across the street from my apartment.

While back in the States, the cough I’d developed in Beijing, which I had just assumed was due to poor health and the frigid winters, vanished. I’m back in Beijing, and, after a few days of murky skies when I got back in mid-February, so is the cough. But since the alternative to solving this problem is to go back home or live in a bubble, I’ll just grin, bear it and keep on wheezing.

GRAY AREA
Blocked Internet
I’m up in the air about not having unlimited access to the Internet. Most American social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like – are blocked for a variety of political reasons I won’t get into.

But as inconvenient as it’s been, I feel like I have much more control over my life. Not being able to check Facebook, without the use of certain Great-Firewall-of-China- bypassing software, means I don’t spend hours on end checking up on friends’ profiles. And the friends that really matter have made it a point to keep in touch with me through this old thing called e-mail.

I will say that I miss YouTube, because watching Charlie bite fingers or anesthesia-induced David after the dentist never gets old.

Last Snow of the Season

2011-03-11T06:00:00.003-05:00

While I've already put my heavy winter jacket away for the year, I'm putting up some pics from the last snow of the season. Just when temperatures appeared to be on the rise when I got back to Beijing a cold front moved in and the government shot its iodine rockets to seed the clouds to make it rain/snow/precipitate to alleviate the drought conditions in Beijing. I took my new Canon 500D out for a spin to test it out in the wintery conditions and snap a few shots -- proof that it actually snowed in Beijing this year.

I spent the afternoon walking around Hou Hai, the lake area just north of the Forbidden City, taking pictures and enjoying the snow. It may not have been the snowstorms that I witnessed while visiting home, but it was still nice to walk around in it and not have to worry about shoveling later.

SNOW WRITER: Just like in America, they write in the snow. Possible translation: Clean me!

LONG LINE: Taking a ride in a rickshaw through the hutong near Hou Hai is always fun. In the cold weather... maybe not so much

STONE COLD: A few stone statues at one of the bars

SNOW FUN: Finally, someone used the snow wisely and made a snowman. The few times that it's snowed, I haven't seen enough of these guys around the city

SHENGDAN LAOREN: Santa with Chinese characteristics

WHITE LAKE: Snow covered Hou Hai and the the drum and bell tower in the background

Smog On, Smog Off

2011-03-05T10:00:00.000-05:00

I knew I was back in Beijing, after a few weeks of much needed vacationing at home, not by the number of Chinese people around me or the Chinese characters on every sign but by the thick cloud of smog hovering in the air.

“Welcome back Brandon,” I thought to myself. The depressing haze made me want to jump on the first plane bound State-side for another few weeks of vacation and blue skies.

Pollution is a serious problem in Beijing, but when you have millions of cars jamming the streets, what can you expect?

The day after I returned to China, the pollution level in the capital city went “beyond measurable pollution levels,” according the U.S. embassy which tracks these levels daily. Chinese officials warned people, especially the elderly, to stay indoors. I wanted to do the same, but, alas, three weeks of vacation meant I would be missed at work.

Luckily, most of my commute to work was underground – a subway took me across the city where I caught a bus to the Beijing Review compound. The time spent aboveground was depressing with visibility limited to a few hundred yards, the sky a disgusting brownish orange. People covered their mouths and nostrils with medical masks, scarves, newspapers or whatever they could get their hands on. You would have thought SARS or swine flu had broken out again.

As far as health risks go, the smog hasn’t been directly related to any deaths (that I know of or was able to find in online research), although I’m sure long-term exposure can result in a variety of ailments. When I was home from January to February the cough I’d developed while living in Beijing -- which I just assumed was because of my weak immune system, allergies or inability to adapt to city life -- vanished. Two days after returning to Beijing, that cough was back along with acute pains in my chest. It must be my foreign lungs, since most of my Chinese colleagues and friends seem immune to the pollution, or are much better at faking health.

These smoggy skies are the most depressing and annoying part about living in Beijing. At times it feels like living through the apocalypse, sans mushroom clouds and radioactive wastelands. I’m 24 and when the sky is brown I get short-winded walking up six flights of stairs to my apartment. That’s not because I’m overweight or out of shape -- I actually live a relatively healthy lifestyle due to a lack of fried foods, donuts and other delicacies of the Coal Region -- it’s because of the air. So maybe I’ll need another vacation, this time to an island in the south Pacific, sooner than I expected.

Home for the Chinese Holiday

2011-02-27T00:24:00.016-05:00

With shovel in hand and Penn State winter cap on my head, I looked at the fluffy white sidewalk at the side of my house in Tamaqua. I’d been greeted that morning to three inches of snow. This was three inches on top of the roughly foot of snow that had been leftover from the snow showers we’d received throughout the winter.

My parents grumbled about the weekly winter weather with wishes that the cold season would come to a close. I, however, was euphoric. Snow, snow, glorious snow. It was a sensation I hadn’t experienced in my second home, Beijing, for close to a year. This winter in China has been cold with temperatures hovering around 10 degrees Fahrenheit but lacking of any snow. And I could see why – all the snow that should have fallen in Beijing had apparently been re-routed to Tamaqua and the rest of northeast Pennsylvania.

I’d forgotten how strenuous shoveling can get, but I was glad to be home. Back in China, it was the Spring Festival holiday, where the country’s population of 1.3 billion uplifts itself from its place of employment and journeys to hometowns across the country. Since all my Chinese co-workers and friends were visiting their families, I decided that I’d do the same and throw in a few weeks of vacation to make the trip home – 14 hours in the air – worth it. Vacationing in Tamaqua in winter, what a concept.

It had been close to a year and a half since I was home and in that time a lot had changed. My brother had graduated from high school, my cousin had a baby and most of my friends from college were now spread out over most of the United States. But a lot remained unchanged. Tamaqua, for the most part, was the same as I had left it. My Mom still had her big blue van. And my room was all but untouched, including my soft-as-a-cloud bed (my bed in Beijing is comparable to a rock complete with bumps of algae, or at the very least a few planks of wood).

The agenda for my three-week vacation was simple: I would do as little work as possible, eat as much American/Coal Region cuisine as possible, and just relax in front of my parent’s big screen TV. Life in Beijing is both tiring and lacking of any decent American meals, i.e. cheeseburgers, fried food and desserts. And Chinese television is non-sensical – even if I understood the language, I doubt I’d find the programs as interesting as medical dramas like House or anything on the Game Show Network.

As I sat on my couch for most of the three-weeks, pierogies and hoagies never tasted so good, and American television never as entertaining. Even the commercials, which for years had annoyed me, now seemed clever. I even considered buying the Shakeweight, now wildly popular, I’m assuming based on advertisements.

For gifts, I limited myself to buying a few red rabbits (it is the Year of the Rabbit, after all) and terracotta warrior statues. Miniature Mao Zedong trinkets didn’t go over so well the last time I was home – one of my friends proudly displayed his statue at work only to be asked if he was a communist – so any resemblances of the Chairman remained in China.

I also brought home bottles of baijiu, white rice wine considered the vodka of China, although the only similarities baijiu shares with vodka is the color. The taste is horrendous – imagine what battery acid would taste like; that’s baijiu -- and sits atop my list of worst tasting anythings ever list. With one sip, you feel it fall all the way into your stomach, like a bomb about to cause serious damage to your digestive system. And having given a few bottles to a few friends, I now think that I may have fewer friends in general. In my defense, I was only trying to share some Chinese culture.

Before I could say “halupki” my trip was over and I was China bound once more. I’d seen my family, visited friends in New York City, Washington, D.C., State College and everywhere in between, and stuffed my face with all the food I’d missed since moving abroad.

In retrospect, the three weeks at home may have been a bit much – the reverse culture shock I’d experienced at home had turned into a normal routine as I remembered how great America is and how inconvenient it can be to be an expat in Beijing. But it also helped renew the sense of adventure that is living in China and made me enthusiastic about the months and possible years ahead living abroad.

GROUP PHOTO: It's a tradition at every family gathering to have a photo of all the "kids," Taylors and Olseskis. These group photos were still taken while I was in China, but in my stead one of my cousins, Megan and Jonathan, would hold up a photo of me. It was nice to be home, in person, for this new photo

NEW FAMILY MEMBER: Last spring, my cousin Megan had a baby: Bentley. I was a little nervous meeting him for the first time, since he's had a whole year to get to know everyone else in the family and choose favorites but I think he liked me

LITTLE HELPER: Every time my dad or anyone in the family tries to do work, there's always a cat willing to lend a paw

CHRISTMAS IN FEBRUARY: My parents kept the Christmas tree up and even had a few presents for me since I haven't celebrated a proper Christmas in two years

THAT CAT: Our cat TC loves attention. I could tell he missed me, since he would follow me around the house to make sure I wasn't leaving

Castles in the Snow

2011-01-29T05:59:00.007-05:00

HARBIN -- Snow and Ice World -- Part 3 of 3

Most impressive of my two-day trip were the castles, temples and towers of the Ice and Snow World. Each structure was made from blocks of ice carved out of the solidly frozen Songhua River that runs north of city center. In my youth, my dad and I had struggled to make small, two-room buildings out of packed snow. Seeing entire castles that resembled those in Europe, in size and grandeur, made these childhood efforts seem trivial.

As night descended, the lights within each ice block that formed the foundation, walls and spires of the buildings were illuminated in an aurora borealis of colors. Against the snow-white ground with the colorful lights dancing about, it felt like I’d slipped into a life-sized snow globe – a machine in the distance dispersing freshly made snow completed the scene.

By the end of the trip, my feet were frozen, my hands sore and my nose red like Rudolph the Reindeer’s, but I had a slew of great photos and a new found respect for the word “cold.” And like my other foreign friends who have visited the ice festival, I can check Harbin off my list of travel destinations and fondly remember the fun I’d had in the snow and ice of the northern city while enjoying warmer climates in the winters to come.

GLACIAL CASTLES:

TOWERS OF ICE:

BIG, COLD BEER:

COLD DINO:

ICE SLIDE:

YAK ATTACK:

DOUBLE TROUBLE:

ALL LIT UP:

Tiger, Tiger

2011-01-21T04:49:00.002-05:00

HARBIN-- Tiger Park -- Part 2 of 3

Harbin is home to one of the largest tiger preserves in the world. The preserve is home to hundreds of Siberian tigers and a few other wild cats – panthers, lions, and ligers included. The tigers were split up into different holding areas a few acres in size and allowed to roam around. Buses rigged with bars over the windows took us through the various areas as the driver tried not to run over any of the precious beasts. Most of the tigers were indifferent to our presence, but a few pawed the bus or grunted if it slowed down.

In the largest area, our bus pulled into a large open area and stopped. Tigers started moving our way in all directions. A second car entered the area and the tigers perked up. The car pulled up beside our bus and the driver opened his door quickly and threw something onto the top of the vehicle. It was a live chicken. Feeding time.

Two tigers jumped for the bird, which tried to flap away, but soon found itself in the jaws of a third tiger. A few more chickens and pheasants were thrown atop the car, meeting similar fates as the first. But this was just part of the tour – for a fee, tourists could pay for slabs of meat ($7) or live chickens ($14), pheasants ($14), goats ($90) and even cattle ($200). Call it cruel, but it made the experience a bit more realistic in terms of watching the tigers pounce their prey.

CAT NAP: One of the tigers sits atop a rock, indifferent to the bus fully of tasty tourists, which I happened to be in, not 10 feet away

SPOTS AMONG THE SNOW: Each holding area had a certain number of tigers. The largest had about 30

BIG SCRATCHING POST: A tiger scratches into a tree in one of the holding pens. It's funny how these big cats imitate smaller domesticated cats

LOUNGING AROUND: A tiger shows off his/her better side for a bus full of tourists

PRICE FOR FOOD: Call it what you want, tigers need to eat too

SNOW WHITE: The tiger preserve had Siberian white tigers in special pens

HERE KITTY, KITTY: Some of the tigers were a bit camera shy, or annoyed with all the tourists trying to get their photos

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL: One tiger found our bus interesting enough to get a close up look

Ice, Ice Baby

2011-01-15T22:14:00.007-05:00

HARBIN-- Zhaolin Park -- Part 1 of 3

Winter in Beijing this year has been a complete let down. Last year, we in Beijing were treated to two major snow storms by Christmas. This year, we had a 30-second flurry just before New Year's and that was about it. I almost feel like I'm getting ripped off -- Beijing has the cold weather associated with winter, often times dropping into negative territory, but snow is rare. As a native of northeast Pennsylvania and the many Nor Easters we get, when it gets cold there needs to be snow. No exceptions.

So to fulfill that part of me that craves the frigid fluffy white stuff I took matters into my own hands and headed north -- to Harbin.

Harbin is China's largest northern city, in Heilongjiang Province. The city is heavily influenced by Russia and has all the Western features associated with a city in Europe.

But aside from being cold and having some decent architecture Harbin is known for its annual Ice Festival.

Last year, I opted out of taking a journey north to see the snow and ice -- I was just getting started with my job and was short on cash and the urge to spend any unnecessary time in the cold. But this year, with no snow, a little extra cash on hand and the desire to do some traveling, I decided to man up.

With new Timberland boots (fur included), a nice new [fake] down winter jacket and three pairs of thermals, I was fairly certain I'd survive the two day trip I had planned.

The high speed train I'd booked -- 8 hours from Beijing to Harbin -- arrived around 4 p.m. It was relatively dark by then and perfect for visiting Zhaolin Park for the night-time ice sculptures on display.

Temperatures were about -30 degrees C or roughly -22 F.

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON: The ice sculptures came in different sizes, most close to life size

FUN WITH BOB: I was surprised to see these two characters at the Ice Fest. But American cartoons are wildly popular in China, so it figures

WHO?: An ice owl, one of the any animal sculptures at Zhaolin

BRIDGE MAY BE ICE: A bridge across the small creek in Zhaolin was made completely of ice

COOL PAVILION: A typical pavilion and pathway found in most Chinese parks... made of ice

TEMPLE OF ICE: Many of the sculptures were of well-known landmarks in China and around the world, like this one of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing

COLD AS ICE: A passageway made of ice

CARE FOR SOME COLD?: A Care Bear ice sculpture

My 2nd Five-Year Plan

2011-01-01T20:13:00.000-05:00

For our annual New Year's party at CIPG, I was asked to give a speech on living in China and working for CIPG. A broad topic yes, but I focused in on the goals I've set for myself while living here, if only in a comical way. The Chinese staff liked the speech so much I wrote it up as an article that will be published in an upcoming issue of Beijing Review.

Three years ago, the thought of moving to and working in China was just about as foreign as the country itself. I certainly had the means and interest to visit, but I really had no desire to move abroad – it wasn’t part of my five-year plan at the time.

But then this thing called the financial crisis swept the globe, crashing markets and putting millions out of work. With no jobs in America, particularly in the communications field for a recent college graduate like myself, and with unemployment skyrocketing, I found myself with a sudden change of heart toward working abroad.

I considered my options. With no job prospects, I could: stay at home and live with dear old mom and dad; or accept an internship in China and move to a country I’d never visited before, didn’t speak the language, knew little about the culture and where I had no friends or contacts.

Now, you may think it was a difficult decision to make – leaving my home and giving up everything familiar for a life abroad where I would essentially be pressing the reset button on my life – but, then again, you don’t know my parents. I certainly don’t want to imply that they are bad parents, they’ve actually been the most prominent guiding forces in my life and have helped me at every major crossroad I’ve faced throughout the years, but I’m just one of those people who needs a major change of scenery every now and then. And you don’t get a much bigger change of scenery than moving from the hills of Pennsylvania, my home state, where there are more cows than people, to Beijing where there’s a mountain, and a sea, of people. So China it was.

I’ve been here for almost two years now, no major complaints or qualms.

Even before coming to China, I’ve tried to map out where I wanted to go with my life, usually in five-year intervals. Graduating college, working for my nationally esteemed college newspaper, and finding a job working for a major publication were all part of my 1st Five-Year Plan. Seeing that the five-year plan seems to be working pretty well for China, now in it’s 11th Five-Year Plan, I decided to stick with this development model and formulate my 2nd Five-Year Plan.

First of all, I want to learn Chinese. Since moving to Beijing and taking my Mandarin lessons seriously I’ve made major improvements – I can say a lot more than just “ni hao” (hello), “zai jian” (goodbye) and “zai lai yi ge pijiu” (bring one more beer) – but I want to get to a level where I can have conversations with people or solve certain problems that arise in my daily life. And grunting and pointing like a caveman when I want something or when I’m trying to communicate with people is getting kind of boring, not to mention embarrassing.

I want to be famous, or at least experience what it’s like to be a celebrity. The Chinese people have been extremely helpful in allowing me to realize this goal. Whenever I go to the Great Wall or any other major tourist site at least one Chinese person will request to have their photo taken with me. Apparently I look like a mix between Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt. Now all I need is for someone to ask me to autograph a T-shirt or movie poster.

I want to write a book. After living in Beijing for almost two years I feel like I have enough material for a short memoir, a “What to do” book, a “What not to do” book, some poetry or maybe a nice “Where’s Brandon?” picture book where you have to find me, the foreigner, in various photos full of Chinese people, like Tiananmen Square on National Day or the subway terminal at rush hour.

I want to get married, which means I’ll have to find a girlfriend first. This will probably be the easiest goal in my 2nd Five-Year Plan to accomplish since at least five girls tell me they love me every time I go to the Silk Market. This complements the “Hey, sexy man” remark I get as I peruse the different clothing stalls which makes me feel like a celebrity.

I want to stay in shape, something that’s somewhat difficult since I spend most of my day inside and in front a computer screen. But, despite my increased lethargy and unwillingness to take the stairs in lieu of the escalators, after using Chinese squat toilets for almost two years my legs, midsection and lower body are in the best physical condition they’ve ever been in. And we’ll just leave it at that.

And, on a more serious note, I’d like to visit Mount Everest, because it’s there. And by there, I mean here, in China’s back yard. From Beijing, it’s still a lengthy journey, but compared to the United States it’s much more convenient and accessible.

Will I accomplish all these tasks? Of course not, but it’s a framework to living an interesting and somewhat coordinated life. And what I don’t accomplish in the 2nd Five-Year Plan will just have to wait for the 3rd Five-Year Plan – and depending on how the second plan works out, I may still be in China to continue it.

PAST AND PRESENT: I talk with one of the former editors in chief of Beijing Review about life in the Middle Kingdom and working for the magazine

Like a Bat Out of Beijing

2010-11-06T00:42:00.001-04:00

This blog post appeared as an Expat Eye in the November 4 issue of Beijing Review

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about China since moving here, it’s this: the rules of the road are far different than those Stateside. Actually, perhaps the word rules is a bit of an overstatement; “suggestions of the road” may be more fitting.

Now, I don’t want to come off as just another foreigner complaining about the chaos that is called driving in China, especially in Beijing – because I actually find it quite fascinating. Yes, at times it seems a bit unsafe, compared to just being a nuisance, but this China-specific driving style adds to the excitement of city living.

And while no two driving experiences have been the same, one driver stands out -- his name was John Ping.

John is a driver for hire, specializing in tours of Beijing and trips to Mutianyu and other parts of the Great Wall. I found him on the Web with a simple Google search of "Beijing, driver, Mutianyu." Family members would be visiting and I wanted to take them to the Great Wall, but avoid the hassle of a tour bus or tour group. John seemed to be the perfect option.

Reviews on his website were favorable. He was a nice, easygoing, funny guy. He spoke English extremely well. He'd get us to Mutianyu fast. He was just the kind of driver I was looking for.

John picked us up bright and early and off we went in his dark colored, American-made Chevrolet car. John liked American cars. He needed the horsepower, he said, but I didn't know why. I soon found out.

From previous trips to Mutianyu, I knew that it usually takes an hour and a half to get to the parking area. John got us there in just under an hour.

On the Airport Expressway, John cruised along, passing cars, trucks and a few police cars. Left lane, right lane, left lane, right lane -- he'd spend only a few seconds in each before passing one car, coming bumper to bumper with another and passing that one as well. Once we reached the back roads, John slowed a bit but persisted in passing car after car. On turns where you couldn't see oncoming traffic, he'd pass. He even managed to pass while sending a text on his iPhone -- and while I, sitting in the front seat, held my breath.

The whole drive he was laughing, but not like a madman, despite almost driving like one at times. From the moment we left Beijing, he was joking about life in the city, politics and news from America. He told us about his family, about his daughter who wanted to study in the United States and his ambition to go to America with her and continue his driving service (perhaps with tours around Washington, D.C. or New York City, depending on where she was accepted). He asked about my family's visit to Beijing and made some suggestions for Peking opera performances, restaurants, acrobatic shows and other sights around the city. He really knew his stuff.

And his English was superb, the best I'd heard from any driver in Beijing. It made our conversations more enjoyable and the ride less stressful.

After walking the wall, I thought I'd be able to catch some sleep on the drive back, but sleep couldn't catch me -- John was driving too fast. But I think he got the message from the looks on our faces and gasps as we maneuvered between traffic and he slowed down. It took over an hour to get back to Beijing, and we were perfectly fine with that.

Was John a reckless driver? Perhaps. But was he a bad driver? Absolutely not. While I felt like he was taking a few too many liberties with the road, not once did I feel like we were in any serious danger or that John wasn’t in control of the vehicle. We never had any near hits – only near misses (hey, I'm an optimist) – and John was quite confident in the way he was driving.

That's why I hired him a second time.

When the next batch of family members came to visit, I called John. They'd been forewarned about the trip to Mutianyu, but even with a complete briefing John still had a few tricks up his sleeve. In the parking lot, John maneuvered the car into the through way where cars get out, proclaiming, "This is MY space." Oh, John.

Since my two trips I've recommended John to several friends and received no complaints. Because, all in all, despite a little wild driving, John knew what he was doing. And I doubt for only 600 RMB he'd put anyone's lives, or his car, in danger.

DARING DRIVER: I know I may seem critical of John's driving, but he was much better behind the wheel than most cab drivers in Beijing. I highly recommend him to any travelers in Beijing who don't want the hassle of buses or tour groups, but are looking for a fun ride. Be sure to check out his website for more information on his driving services

Happy Halloween in Happy Valley

2010-10-30T22:25:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago some friends asked if I wanted to go to Happy Valley. Happy Valley? I've been there, albeit back in central Pennsylvania. I inquired: What is this "Happy Valley"?

Happy Valley (Beijing), as it turns out, is a theme park in the southeast of the city. It's similar to Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure in Florida with the park divided into different areas with different themes. The areas included Atlantis, the Ant Kingdom, the Aegean (Mediterranean), an ancient Maya Civilization, and a race car/speed way area.

Happy Valley had thrill rides. Happy Valley had games you can never win. Happy Valley had people in costume in the different themed areas. And Happy Valley had roller coasters.

Back in the States, when I was in high school, my dad and I would go to a major theme park every summer to try out some of the best roller coasters America had to offer. Six Flags was one of our favorite parks, but we also took a road trip to Cedar Point in Ohio to ride the world's tallest roller coaster (at the time), Millennium Force. Happy Valley's roller coasters weren't the biggest, or best, but they served their purpose and provided me with a much needed adrenaline boost.

Halloween decorations were everywhere in preparation for the coming ghoulish holiday. It was nice to see jack-o-lanterns since the Western holiday is largely ignored outside major tourist spots.

Happy Valley Beijing wasn't as fun as Happy Valley PA -- rides and roller coasters just can't compensate for football games, parties and the college life. But buckling into the seat of a roller coaster and letting the anticipation of the first drop build up brought back great memories of summer trips to some of America's best theme parks.

ATLANTIS DISCOVERED: Who knew that the lost city of Atlantis was actually in the suburbs of Beijing? The roller coast had the same design as the Superman ride at Six Flags theme park in New Jersey

MA MA MAYA: Another themed area of Happy Valley was like ancient South America, with Mayan statues and other native structures

MAYAN PARADE: A few park staff in costume paraded around the Mayan themed area

ANT KINGDOM: The kid area of the theme park was a larger-than-life ant colony. The ant in this photo is doing a traditional Chinese camera pose: two fingers up making the "peace" sign

HAPPY HALLOWEEN: Halloween decorations were all around -- a nice reminder that the holiday was upon us

BIG SPLASH: A visitor to the Aegean sea area is about to get his by a wave from a Poseidon ride, similar to the Sploosh at Knoebel's Grove in Pennsylvania

SAFE ZONE: I also took the opportunity to get a cool photo of the massive wave -- but I stood far enough away to avoid getting wet

The 163 lb White Guy in the Room

2010-10-22T08:53:00.001-04:00

Beijing Review flew me and their French foreign expert Guillaum down to Shanghai the other week for a press conference for the DVD release of Days and Nights in Shanghai. Recall from earlier posts (April and July) that I was in Shanghai on business -- this was the reason.

The DVD covers 24 hours in the Chinese city that never sleeps as a promotional tool for Shanghai and Beijing Review's new initiative into multimedia news coverage and projects.

You can watch a trailer of the project HERE. Try using Firefox if your current browser doesn't work.

The press conference went as expected -- the big bosses of China International Publishing Group took turns talking about the project and saying what a wonderful thing it was for Beijing Review. At least I'm assuming that's what they were saying since my Chinese is bu hao (not good), but I did pick up a few "very good" and "Shanghai this" and "Shanghai that" along with "DVD."

One of the producers had asked me the day of the press conference if I had anything to say to the media, since they'd probably ask me a few questions -- this came after she told me the day before that all I had to do was show up wearing a suit and look professional-- so naturally I had nothing to say. So I thought quickly.

I could take the presidential route and throw out an “Ich bin ein Shanghai-er,” following President John F. Kennedy’s jelly-donut remark in Berlin. Or maybe I’d take a comical route with a loud “Goooooood morning Shanghai, China!” No, too cliché. Ah hell, I thought, I'll just wing it, throw in some "I Heart Shanghai" comments and smile for the cameras.

A large, red veiled display was rolled out and uncovered, ushering applause and flashes from numerous cameras. A few people shook hands. And then it was over. Most of the media filtered out of the room in a hurry.

What just happened, I thought to myself. The French foreign expert who had done the French version of the DVD had the same thought.

I shouldn’t have been that surprised. Having foreign employees at predominantly Chinese events to add a touch of diversity to the affairs is fairly common here. But a few companies go to extremes, hiring foreigners off the street to fill is as "temps" to attend corporate functions or pose as employees or business partners. Said foreigners aren’t required to have any background experience in the company’s industry, they just have to show up for the event, shake hands, maybe give out business cards (with their real or stage names) and smile.

It’s like hiring models for a car show or clowns for a kid’s birthday – sans big goofy shoes but requiring nice white faces. It also apparently pays well -- somewhere around $500 with paid airfare per event-- because foreigners are more than willing to take part in the facade for a day and shake hands with businesspeople from around the world. And, I’m not going to lie, I’ve been keeping my ears open for a few opportunities.

But I was glad to be at the press conference with a legitimate employee with a legitimate company in Beijing.

In the end, I got to do a quick one-minute interview with Shanghai’s English International Channel, which you can watch HERE (it's about 10 minutes or so into the program) so at least I got to make a small contribution to promoting the DVD. Maybe if I improve my Chinese to a level where I can say more than “I’m American” or “Are you sure this isn’t dog meat?” they’ll let me give that speech at the next press conference.

SHANGHAI TV: A woman from Shanghai's English channel ICS interviews me about the project

TEAM SHANGHAI: Chen Ran, producer for the project, myself and Guillaum, the French foreign expert, stand in front of the cutout display of the Days and Nights in Shanghai DVD

Photos property of BEIJING REVIEW

Close to Heaven

2010-10-16T08:38:00.000-04:00

My ears popped as the cable car ascended the green mountains around me. Large gorges and rocks jutting out from the mountain were all around. I was traveling with a few Chinese and foreign co-workers, one of whom muttered some random statistic about the probability of us falling to our doom.

Just then, the cable car passed over some low lying trees revealing the scene above: a temple on top of Mount Tai (Taishan) about a mile above sea level and entrance ways called the Gates of Heaven.

Well, if we were all going to die here, at least we’d be pretty close to heaven, I thought.

Taishan, in Shandong Province, is one of China’s sacred mountains. It’s a place of cultural and religious significance – there’s a few temples and worship halls at the peak – and is the best place to catch a great sunrise or sunset and feel spiritually awakened or reborn, so our guide said. We were there midday, so there was no chance of such revitalization for me.

From base to peak it can take up to 10 hours walking (at a leisurely pace) along paths and a 7,000-plus step staircase.

The chairlift took less than 10 minutes, and although lacking the enlightenment – in spirit and altitude change -- I was sure to feel taking the stairs, I was fine with taking pictures of the paths and steps to heaven from the cable car.

The mountain heights had been developed in proper tourist fashion. Large walkways facilitated a mountain of tourists on the mountain’s peak. Even in the off travel season, landmarks like Taishan, which is one of China’s UNESCO Natural Heritage Sites, draw huge crowds.

And like all tourist areas, there were people trying to sell me things I really didn’t need, but wanted nonetheless – who can say no to an ordinary rock with red Chinese characters on it, or stones washed in “sacred water” from the mountains?

A large telecommunications tower loomed next to the Daoist temple, an out of place obstruction from the modern era that detracted from the natural beauty of the ancient mountains. But hey, even Daoist monks need cell phone reception.

Our group ate at a restaurant in a hotel near the mountaintop. Looking out through the window, we could see the clouds below. Our guide told us they were rain clouds and that Tai’an City below would be getting wet, but not us. Naturally, the food and beverage was overpriced, but we figured there was some kind of transportation charge for getting it up the mountain on top of the inflated prices for tourists.

Taishan even has a beer named after it, although the taste was far from heavenly.

Taishan wasn’t nearly as impressive as the mountains I’d seen in Xinjiang on my August adventure, but the air was fresh, the sights beautiful and the trip relaxing. And since I didn’t have to take 7,000 stairs to get there or walk up winding forest paths, I’ll mark this one down as a fun trip in my travelogue.

GROUP PHOTO: Foreign experts along for the trip included Michael Fuksman (American), myself, Patrick O'Dea (New Zealand) and Christian O'Brien (Great Britain)

BARE PEAKS: Patches of rock jut out from the Taishan range

PICTURE PERFECT: A couple looks sits on a path at the peak of Taishan mountain, watching the mountains roll off into the distance

TOURISM IN THE CLOUDS: Taishan, a UNESCO site, is a popular tourist destination. Even in the off tourist season, there was a mountain of people on top of the Taishan

Some photos by Liu Xinlian, Beijing Review

Walking in Confucius' Footsteps

2010-10-10T08:18:00.007-04:00

For the yearly Beijing Review foreign expert trip, the HR department took us to Shandong Province south of Beijing to visit Qufu and Taishan. A guide picked us up at the train station for a three-day tour.

Our first stop was Qufu, the hometown of Chinese philosopher Confucius.

As widely known as Confucius and his teachings are, Qufu was small and quaint. Even with the enormous Confucius Temple (Kong Miao) and the grandiose Confucius Family Mansion and surrounding gardens, not to mention the large crowds of Chinese tourists, the town was quiet and remote, yet chock full of history. The nearby Confucius forest, where the great Chinese sage and his descendants are buried, was solemn with trees standing side by side ancient burial mounds.
But with the exception of a few smaller Chinese-style pavilions, Confucius never got to see any of it – the temple, mansion and monuments were all constructed after he died.

The temple grounds were built in rings, like the rings of a tree, with each ring contributed by a different Chinese emperor. The inner most ring housed a number of important monuments to the philosopher: a pavilion where Confucius had taught some of his students and a tree planted by Confucius himself, so said my guide. The tree leaned against one of the entrance gates to the temple ground center, held up by a long steel cable.

The Confucius family mansion was somewhat simple, not at all like the Forbidden City or other royal grounds I’d seen in Beijing or Shanghai, although Confucius’s descendants were highly regarded and revered by the emperor’s family. The mansion property was large, yet largely empty with only a few artifacts on display. Most of the Kong family (Confucius’s family name) has since relocated to Taiwan, following the end of the Chinese Civil War and defeat of Chinese Nationalist forces in 1949, but the lineage continues, now in its 83rd generation.

The tomb of the great philosopher and generations of the Kong family was located in a forest near the city’s limits. And much like his teachings, it was simple, yet elegant. A large stele displaying words of remembrance stood proudly above his resting place; a prayer mat in front for people to pay their respects. Some of Confucius’s sons were buried nearby. Large stone statues watched over the sacred grounds. Throughout the wooded area were large mounds -- the burial sites of other Confucian descendants. The graves looked like large turtle shells, shaped somewhat like septic tanks yet containing much more valuable remains. The burial mounds ran off into the forest in all directions, for miles and miles.

And the grounds were quiet, much more so than they should have been considering the flux of people who were visiting. It was like someone had pressed the mute button. The only sound was that of birds and blowing branches as I walked on the paths with burial mounds on either side.

Visiting Qufu helped put a face to a name I’d only ever read about in history books. To walk where Confucius had walked and sit where he had sat was truly inspiring. I can only hope some of that age-old wisdom rubbed off on me.

TOMBS OF THE UNKNOWN: The descendants of Confucius are buried in a forest outside of Qufu. Our guide said there were "millions" of descendants

RESTING PLACE: The tomb of Confucius

THE CONFUCIUS TEMPLE: The entrance to the Confucius Temple. The temple was built after the sage died and was visited by China's emperors and royalty

REALLY OLD TREE: Our guide told us this tree was planted by Confucius over 2,000 years ago

FAMOUS FOOTSTEPS: The three white-tiled paths were for the emperor (center path) and his aids/assistants/concubines/etc

Day 10-11: Kashgar to Urumqi to Beijing

2010-09-06T11:00:00.001-04:00

SUNDAY, AUGUST 22 - MONDAY, AUGUST 23
We flew back to Urumqi on Sunday. We'd be flying back to Beijing Monday evening. The last two days were supposed to be nothing but fun and relaxation -- no traveling, no sightseeing. But I'd manage to to get horrendously food poisoned and spend most of the evening running to and from a bathroom. But I guess it was fitting since Layla had been sick the day we left Urumqi for Kashgar.

So ended my Xinjiang adventure. Not since coming to China over a year ago had I enjoyed a trip like this. From mountains to deserts and old cities in between, I'd seen so much that most people only see in movies -- and most of Xinjiang's features don't even make it that far. They're more or less overlooked by China's other marvels, the Great Wall and Forbidden City to name a few.

Xinjiang will always hold a special place in my mind as a place away from the monstrous crowds of tourists; a backwater area where only brave souls go. I'll never forget the reflections of the mountains on Karakul Lake, looking off into the endless desert, or visiting the ruins around Turpan. And I'll certainly never forget the restaurant were I got food poisoning that I was convinced was going to kill me.

And as I look at the photos I took -- all 1,200 of them -- I'm already planning a return trip, at least in my mind. Wanna join?

Day 9: Sandstorm

2010-09-06T10:22:00.006-04:00

SATURDAY, AUGUST 21
We went to a market to buy a few souvenirs and then stopped by the Kashgar city square. There's a big, out of place Mao statue there.

A sandstorm rolled in, forcing us to put on our glasses and cover our faces. A lot of people around us acted like nothing was happening -- this must have been nothing out of the norm for them.

We stumbled into a park where we found a few Disney character statues -- Minnie Mouse and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Days 7-8: Taklamakan Desert - An Ocean of Sand

2010-09-06T04:36:00.008-04:00

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19- FRIDAY, AUGUST 20
The Taklamakan Desert was about 30 minutes from Yarkand. We'd be staying overnight with our guide, two camels and a camel handler. I had hyped this part of the trip up since Layla and I decided to come to Xinjiang. I'd never been in, or even near, a desert before, let alone go on a desert trek on camelback.

The desert is one of the largest shifting sand dune deserts in the world. Trekking from east to west takes about 92 days. But a night and a day in the desert was more than enough for me.

But from the get go, our trip turned to dust in the wind. When we arrived at the edge of the desert, we were greeted by a large group of camels, and an equally large group of German tourists. Soon enough, the camels were all "rented" and we had to wait while our guide went to a neighboring village to get two more camels. An hour later, our guide returned.

When the camels arrived, I thought we'd be good to go, but the one camel decided to be stubborn, so we had to wait while the camel handlers got it under control. An hour later, our camels were saddled up and we were ready to go.

My camel was still upset about something (maybe he had been sleeping and awoken from a dream by our guide) and didn't want to obey the handler, but I was just glad to be heading off into the desert as the sun started to go down. That lasted for about five minutes, because after that all I wanted to do was get off the camel -- the inside of my legs had started to hurt as the camel bobbed up and down crossing the sand dunes.

Even that didn't last long -- the sun was going down so we needed to make camp, just 30 minutes into our journey. And at that point, we had only traveled about a quarter mile since camels travel a bit slower than I'd imagined and our pair needed to stop every three feet to munch on something lying around on the ground. The village and farms we'd left being at the camel camp could still be heard in the background.

The next big disappointment was the sand dunes themselves -- they were covered in shrubs. A few bottles and trash was even lying around. I had pictured our 2-day trek as being like something out of Lawrence of Arabia, but alas, it was more like riding a camel at a carnival, with a bit more sand. Our guide explained that if you wanted to see the real sand dunes, you needed to trek three days out into the desert, then three days back.

So there we were, within smelling distance of a farm and in range of a few visible lights from the main camp. The camp fire we were promised we was too small to cook anything with, so dinner consisted of bread and a few granola bars.

To top it all off, at night it rained three times.

The next morning, having slept on the desert floor and not wanting to spend another minute around the sand, we called it early and headed back to the camp. Our camels had wandered off in the night, so our guide and handler had to go find them. And my legs still hurt from the day before, so I wasn't looking forward to getting back on my S.O.B. camel, who was still angry about something. At one point the guide and handler couldn't get the camels to move and started yelling and hitting them with sticks while we were still on them. Eventually, my camel spit up whatever it was chewing all over Layla. And I'm also pretty sure Layla's camel farted, on numerous occasions, in my general direction.

At last we reached the main camp, after taking the long way back, and headed back to Kashgar.

Ultimately, the trek was a total bust. But I was glad to have been done it, because when was I ever going to have this opportunity again. Maybe next time, I'll walk alongside the camels, or take that weeklong trip to the real part of the desert. I'll check the weather ahead of time too, although, in my defense, I had thought we'd be out a bit further in the desert where i didn't rain.

EAGER TRAVELER: Camel riding is overrated -- camels smell, they're slow and they're very touchy animals

ATTA BOY: Layla's camel was slightly more well behaved than mine, although he had to stop every three seconds to eat or go to the bathroom

DESERT SUNSET: We were lucky that an overcast blocked out the sun for most of our trek. Temperatures in the desert, even our part, sometimes reach 110 degrees we were told

DESERT HEROES: Two bickering camels, three rain showers and a thunderstorm later, we had survived our desert "adventure"

CHILLING: Sitting on the hardwood swinging chair was only a bit more comfortable than sleeping on sand. But the view was stunning

DESERT HOME: Somehow, our tent managed to stay in place during the rains the night before. But in the morning, the camels had run away, leaving us stranded for an hour

SITTING ON THE SAND DUNES: There's something about the desert that's just inspiring. Maybe it's the unscathed landscape or the rolling hills of sand concealing hidden treasures from the past. It was just fun to look out and see nothing in the distance but sand, sand, sand

DESERT BEAUTY: Layla sits on top of a sand dune. On wrong step and you could tumble down a hill of sand and rock -- which would have been a lot of fun compared to putting up with those damn camels

Day 7: Yengisar and Yarkand - The Old Silk Road

2010-09-06T03:03:00.009-04:00

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19
While I'd enjoyed the lakes and cities of Xinjiang, my big trip was an overnight trip in the Taklamakan Desert. To get there, we'd spend a day driving down the old Silk Road to Yarkand, a city near the edge of the desert.

The Silk Road was a major trade route from China, through Central Asia and the Middle East to Turkey and Europe. Marco Polo made the route famous.

On the way we stopped at Yengisar, a village known for its elegant knives, and then move on to a weekly city market. I got to see quite a few animals being traded and the process was interesting too -- a buyer and seller would work through a middle man who got a cut after the deal had been made. Sheep, cattle and a few goats changed hands before my eyes. I was tempted to buy one too, but honestly, what would I have done with a goat?

Yarkand was much larger than I thought it would be. We walked around the old city area and found another market street. Check out the last photo for a sample of the things I saw along the street. It was pretty wild.

MAP: Yarkand is about a 4-hour drive from Kashgar, across deserts, and rolling hills. It was a major capital in ancient times for the Uyghur people and a main stopping point for traders traversing the Silk Road

MELONS, MELONS, MELONS: The market along the old Silk Road was similar to farmer's markets back home -- just with 10 times the number of produce

ANIMAL MARKET: On our way to Yarkand we stopped at an animal market and watched people barter and trade livestock

BIG KNIFE: Yengisar is known for its knives. Knives are used for decoration and slitting the throats of livestock (so I was told)

SKILLED CRAFTSMAN: A Uyghur man slowly crafts a knife. A high quality knife takes 15 days to make

DAGGERS GALORE: You can't come to Xinjiang and not buy a knife. The trick is getting it home -- you can't bring them on your carry0=-on baggage. I had mine shipped home via courier

YARKAND TOMBS: The main tombs in Yarkand belongs to Aman Isa Khan, a famous poet. The other tombs were for the Yarkand Khans and other rulers

OPEN-AIR BUTCHER: Looks very, very closely at this guy's stand. He's a butcher, and those are goat, sheep and cattle heads on the table in front of him. He also seems to be blowing into a bag, but (again, looking closely) you'll notice that its no bag... it's a pair of sheep lungs

Day 6: Karakul Lake - Mountain in the Clouds

2010-09-05T02:06:00.006-04:00

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18
After visiting the over-touristy Tian Chi near Urumqi, I was somewhat hesitant to visit another lake. But having enjoyed the complete absence of tourists so far in Kashgar I thought I'd give Karakul Lake a try.

Karakul Lake is 200 km (124 miles) from Kashgar on the Karakoram Highway, which runs all the way to Pakistan. It took 4 hours to get there.

The ride in was amazing. The highway runs along the side of a mountain valley, a river flowing through the middle. Each side was a different color, sometimes red, sometimes orange and sometimes grayish green. A storm had just swept the area, so piece of the road were washed away. But we made it nonetheless in the 4 hours our guide had said we would, even after stopping at a checkpoint so that we could enter China's "Frontier Territory" (or as I like to think, the "lawless land" of China's wild, wild west).

Karakul left me breathless. I felt as though this lake should be called the Heavenly Lake, not Tian Chi. The sky was blue and the mountains were snow covered. Goats and dogs wandered around the villages nearby. The people were Tajik, from neighboring Tajikistan, and took every opportunity to try to sell Layla and me something. But we were too taken in by the grandeur of the area to care about what they were selling.

The lake is located 3600 m in the mountains. The air was thin and after two hours I felt short of breath. I also started to get a bit dizzy, so we called it a day and made our way back.

Aside from the environment and landscape, what really impressed me was the complete absence of any other tourists. Layla and I were the only ones. And it was great, sheer bliss, to be away from the noisy crowds of Chinese tourists.

MAP: Karakul Lake is located in the mountains, so far up that the thin air will quickly affect travelers to the area. It's also relatively close to Afghanistan and inside China's "Frontier Territory."

A YURT CALLED HOME: Most of the Tajiks in the area live in yurts, tent like buildings that can easily be set up and taken down to ensure mobility

LOCAL GUIDE: A Tajik woman walks along the rocky shore of the lake

MOUNTAIN PASS: The 4-hour drive to Karakul Lake passed quickly as I stared out, wide eyed, at the landscape quickly passing us by

OFF ROADING: The road was washed out, a result of recent floods. Our cab trudged through the mud, and sometimes stopped

SAND MOUNTAIN: On the far shore of the one river was Sand Mountain. You can guess how it got this name

BEAUTIFUL BACKGROUND: Layla and I stand in front of the main peak near Karakul

TAJIK GOODS: A Tajik woman tries to sell Layla different Tajik goods, including a purse and a hat

AWE STRUCK: A Tajik woman looks off into the distance of the mountains near Karakul Lake

GOAT OF A GOOD TIME: Goats could be found all around the lake, enjoying the water and a few snacks I thew their way

Day 5: Kashgar- The Edge of China

2010-09-05T01:04:00.006-04:00

TUESDAY, AUGUST 17
Kashgar was exactly what I was looking for on this trip -- a new culture (Muslim) and people and even better attractions to see. Our hotel, the Seman Hotel, was the former Russian consulate.

We hired a driver for the day and toured the city and outer areas.

Our first stop were tombs of Abakh Khoja and the nearby mosque. We then drove off into the nearby desert to see the ruins of the Mor Stupa. A whole town used to surrounded the temple and stupa area, but had since been lost to the sands of time.

On the way back to Kashgar we stopped and visited a Uyghur family. They were very welcoming and offered us grapes and other snacks and even invited us into their home. Our driver told us it was a great honor for them to host foreigners.

After a brief stop as a mosque, where my girlfriend had to cover her arms because she was wearing a short sleeved shirt, we took a stroll through the Old City of Kashgar. It reminded me of the hutong of Beijing, only older and much more ancient looking. Around every corner was something interesting to see -- cattle roaming the streets, kids playing or someone washing clothes or preparing food.

Kashgar, like most other Chinese cities, is changing everyday. The old is being replaced with the new and people who have visited the city many times over the years told me they don't recognize it anymore. I'm glad I got to see it, before it changes too much.

ROYAL TOMBS: Abakh Khoja tombs house the royal families of Kashgar

GRAPE DEAL: I shake hands with the husband of the family we visited outside Kashgar

ANCIENT TEMPLE: The Mor Stupa outside Kashgar sits on the outskirts of a desert area

ALL THAT STANDS: There used to be a whole town here, surrounding the temple and stupa

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA: All the kids we ran into on our walk through the old city wanted their photos taken. I'd show them each photo and they'd all look at the strange black device that had captured their image

OLD CITY: The old city corridors were thin -- to thin for cars (thank God)

PLAYING AROUND: Two Uyghur children play with a tire

DONKEY TIME: When they weren't using camels, the locals used donkeys to get around

Day 4: Urumqi-Kashgar

2010-09-04T11:37:00.000-04:00

MONDAY, AUGUST 16
The flight from Urumqi to Kashgar was about 2.5 hours. The flight was a little bumpy and the food was bad but Kashgar would be the highlight of the trip.

Located in the southwest tip of Xinjiang, Kashgar is the "real" Xinjiang -- not the Beijing-similar Urumqi.

The drive to our hotel was interesting. We ran into a few camels walking around the streets. Lots of people ride motorbikes.

Day 3: Turpan- Desert Oasis

2010-09-04T10:00:00.004-04:00

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15
Turpan is located on the edge of a desert basin. It is one of the lowest points below sea level in the world. Getting there was interesting -- our bus ride took 4 hours and passed through a pretty desolate region to get to the oasis.

Once in Turpan, we hired a driver to take us to the major sights around the city.

Our first stop was Tuyoq, an old city that is a pilgrimage sight for the Uyghur people. In the side of the one mountain were these old cave dwellings that kind of looked like the same structures American Indians made out west. The village nearby was pretty neat. And the mountains around the city were amazing.

The next stop was the Flaming Mountain -- named because of its red rock and firey-like features.

For lunch we stopped at a Uyghur village and had some nang (bread) and grapes. The village was actually in a huge grape vineyard valley, one of the largest in the region.

Our last stop was an ancient city fortress, called Jiaohe. The ruins sit on an island-like piece of land with high walls. The city is all but gone, lost to the elements, but was fun to explore. There weren't many guard rails, so I was free to roam and check out every little area and side street of the ruins.

MAP: Turpan is on the edge of the Tarim Basin, the northern part of the Taklamakan Desert. It was 4 hours by bus from Urumqi

GRAPE VALLEY: Lunch in the valley consisted of bread, grapes and more grapes

MOUNTAIN FORTRESS: The ruins at Jiaohe were really neat. There used to be a river that flowed around the city, which is why the fortress had no walls

ANCIENT RUINS: Ruins of any kind impress me, partly because we don't have them in the States. The only ruins I've seen in the last 23 years of my life were dilapidated houses from home that were maybe 20 or 30 years old -- unlike Jiaohe which is thousands of years old, and still standing in parts

TEST OF TIME: Unlike America, there weren't too many barriers keeping me from exploring any part of the Jiaohe ruins. A few signs cautioned about deteriorated structures and the possibility of cave ins or collapsing buildings, but there weren't many guards on hand to prevent tourists from being adventurous

TUYOQ MOSQUE: The mosque in Tuyoq wasn't open -- to foreigners

UYGHUR PILGRIMAGE: Visiting Tuyoq seven times is like taking one trip to Mecca. But during my visit I didn't see anyone that looked like a pilgrim

MOUNTAIN ON FIRE: The Flaming Mountain's barren surface was impressive -- even as we drove past at about 100 mph

CAVE DWELLING: The old cave dwellings of Tuyoq looked like the kind American Indians built in the American west. They were being renovated so we couldn't go see them up close

OASIS: Tuyoq, about a 45 minute drive outside Turpan, was also an oasis

RED HILLS: The landscape driving around Turpan was unlike anything I'd ever seen. The whole "surface of the moon" concept really came into my mind here

BARREN LANDSCAPE: Lots of mountains and open plains, but hardly any trees

TURPAN TOWN: Some old buildings in Turpan

POWER OF THE WIND: During the bus ride to and from Turpan we passed huge open areas with wind farms and these wind generators

Day 2: Tian Chi- Close to Heaven

2010-09-04T08:59:00.012-04:00

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14
Tian Chi, also called Heavenly Lake, was our first stop. My other friends had recommended it as a good place to start any sightseeing trip/adventure across Xinjiang. And a good place it was.

We booked a trip through our hostel and left early in the morning. The ride was a bit long, 3 hours, but we also stopped at a few tourist traps along the way. Not that they were trying to sell us anything at these stops, but I felt trapped because I just wanted to see the lake.

The lake's water were blueish-green. And clean. So clean, actually, that I didn't think I'd ever seen anything quite like it before. Water in Beijing and my hometown of Tamaqua aren't the most spectacular things to look at, or drink, but the waters of Tian Chi looked magical; as if drinking them could cure any ailment or grant you special powers or something like that. But I resisted the urge to take a gulp since I have a strict "No Drinking the Water, except from a bottle, in China" policy.

On the lake, a cool breeze swept down from the snow covered peaks in the background. It was nice since temperatures were around +90 degrees that day. On a hill was a Taoist temple. Incense burned, filled the air with its distinct smell.

The walk down from the lake, located about two miles on top of a mountain, was just as fun. A canyon filled with streams and waterfalls had me stopping for a photo every three feet. Again, nothing but clean water and a cool breeze.

MAP: Tian Chi is about a three hour drive from Urumqi. But on the way home, it only took us an hour and a half getting to Urumqi. A prime example of Chinese "skilled" driving.

GOOOOOONG: Layla rings the gong at the Taoist temple

MOUNTAIN ANIMALS: It's kind of hard to see, but the white specks in the photos are sheep

TAOIST TAYLOR: They gave us ribbons at the temple and told us to make a wish and tie the ribbon to a special post near the gong

LITTLE FRIEND: Chinese kids love posing for the camera, especially with foreigners. I still haven't figured what's up with the peace sign thing though

LOVELY LAKE: Tian Chi was impressive, if not a bit touristy. But that's what you get for going with a travel group

TOURIST TRAP: I wanted to see the lake, but like tours the world over we had to stop at a few places first. The first stop was a mock-Uyghr village with yurts (small tent like houses) and a few people dressed in traditional Uyghr clothes

TEA TIME: Even Uyghrs have tea time. Our tour group got to eat and drink in one of the yurts

FALLING WATER: The walk down from Tian Chi was just as impressive as the lake itself. Through a gorge, waterfalls and a stream made their way down to the parking area

SHEEPING AROUND: Goats and sheep call the Tian Chi area home, and are allowed to roam freely on the same paths used by tourists. On a few occasions we had to stop because there were a few goats or sheep in the path

CELEBRITY STATUS: This never gets old: At every sightseeing spot random people ask to have their photo taken with me. I love this country

Day 1- Urumqi

2010-09-03T08:56:00.003-04:00

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13
The trip to Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, took four hours. But even before getting off the plane I was blown away by the autonomous region’s majesty – snow covered mountains lay off in the distance as the plane descended, surrounded by a desert-like landscape. It was a sight I’d only seen in movies.

As you can see from the map, Urumqi is located in a mountain range in Central Xinjiang.

As we drove around Urumqi looking for our hostel I was surprised at how developed the city was. It was almost too developed and reminded me of a slightly dirtier Beijing, complete with smog and lots of traffic. And I didn't see any Uyghrs the first day either.

China is in the process of developing its western regions, an initiative known as the Western Development, to improve the region's infrastructure and bring it up to date with China's east coastal provinces. It also involves moving Han-Chinese into the region, which upsets the local, but it's all being done in the name of progress.

But the next few days, and the rest of the trip, would make up for the lack-luster first day.

Meet the Uyghurs

2010-09-02T07:56:00.005-04:00

Xinjiang's resident population are the Uyghrs, a Turkic people of Central Asia. Their culture and customs are more similar to Muslim areas -- and they speak Chinese, which is not their native tongue, just about as poorly, in some cases, as me.

Layla and I happened to be traveling during Ramadan --the Muslim time of worship when they aren't allowed to eat or drink from sunrise to sunset-- which made finding a restaurant that was open during the day.

Also, China is technically all in one timezone, despite being spread out across three. But the locals recognize their own local time, so if it's 8 p.m. in Beijing, it's 6 p.m. local Xinjiang time.

The people we came in contact with were extremely pleasant and helpful, due largely in part to the fact that we were foreigners.

China's Wild, Wild West

2010-09-01T07:50:00.004-04:00

In the last year living in Beijing, I’ve been to the Forbidden City and Summer Palace four times. I’ve traversed the Great Wall three times. And I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve walked from one end of Tiananmen Square to another. Even when traveling on business or personal trips to Shanghai, I’ve found myself in the same places numerous times, the Expo (three times) and the Shanghai World Financial Center (twice) to name a few.

Needless to say, I needed a change of scenery, not to mention a nice trip away from the people mountain, people sea.

Friends suggested I take a vacation to China’s south, to Guilin in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region or Kunming in Yunnan to gaze upon the geography and see some of China’s minority groups. A cruise down the Yangtze would be a nice option, too. But despite not having visited most of the cultural relics of China’s eastern provinces, my eyes were turned westward – to Xinjiang.

Way out west, friends who had visited the region told me, was picture perfect mountain ranges and a landscape imaginable only in dreams. There were the non-Han Chinese, Uyghr minority group and their Muslim traditions. And there was the food –oh, the food – that I’d come to eat on a weekly basis at Uyghr restaurants around Beijing. It would essentially be like visiting a different country entirely, they’d said, one full of majestic sights, adventures and excitement. And there would be NO large crowds of tourists.

I booked my flight after hearing those words.

For 11 days (from August 13-23), my girlfriend, Layla, and I would be traveling around the autonomous region by plane, bus, cab and camel.

Dad Goes to China

2010-08-24T00:12:00.012-04:00

This post is long, long [long] overdue. My dad visited recently (in July). I wasn't sure how he'd handle China, a country and culture vastly different from America, but he impressed me with his adaptability to this strange land.

Be sure to visit his blog for complete details of the trip.

OLYMPIC PRIDE: Traveling alone is no fun -- that's why I told my dad he couldn't come to China without someone to share the experience, and complaints, with. My dad brought his former student and long-time friend Joe Krushinski. Joe works for the state of Maryland in television and broadcasting. At our first stop, I took them to the Olympic Area to see the Bird's Nest, Water Cube and other Olympic venues.

THE CHAIRMAN MEETS THE CHAIRMAN: Aside from Maryland Public Television, Joe is also the Chairman of the Carbon-Tamaqua American Cancer Society. We felt it was only appropriate to have a photo of the Chairman and the chairman.

DIRECTIONS AROUND BEIJING: "Okay, so take Bus 101 to Fuchengmen, then transfer on Line 2 to Fuxingmen and go three stops. Get out at Exit A and hail a cap. Give him this piece of paper. And here's a cell phone in case you need to call. God speed" were my words to Dad and Joe before they left on their trip to Xi'an.

THE FAST TRAIN: After seeing the major attractions around Beijing -- Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall -- we took a relaxing trip to Tianjin on the intercity fast train. Cruising along at 350 km/h in comfortable seats never felt so good, after spending the previous days walking around Beijing or the Great Wall.

WARRIORS FOR THE DAY: After a few days in Beijing, my dad and Joe were ready to spread their traveling wings and take a one-day trip to Xi'an to see the terracotta warriors. I arranged for them to be picked up and taken on a tour around the city by a guy named Tiger Wang (not to be confused with Tiger Woods, so said my driver John Ping who had arranged the pick up).

ONE STICK, TWO STICK: For someone who had never used chopsticks before, my dad did pretty well getting food from his plate to his mouth.

ONE WITH BUDDHA: I took my dad to a few of my favorite drinking spots, including Fubar, where you can buy a buddha glass with one of many different mixed drinks.

BIG MAO: My dad and Joe stand by a giant statue of Chairman Mao at the China Military Museum in Beijing.

NOT-SO-FORBIDDEN CITY: My dad was really impressed with the architecture and overall layout of the Forbidden City.

WALKING THE WALL: Judging by the ring of sweat around my dad's neck, we'd been on the Great Wall for about an hour.

PHOTO OP: We take a break on our walk on the Great Wall. Thankfully, my dad has been going to the gym and was in good enough shape to traverse the ups and downs of the Wall relatively easily.

INNER CITY: Our first day of sightseeing included a visit to Chairman Mao's mausoleum, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.

BRING YOUR FATHER TO WORK DAY: One of the best parts of my dad's trip was showing him around my office. For years as a child, I had always had fun visiting my dad at work. Now, I had fun showing him Beijing Review and letting him meet my co-workers and foreign colleagues.

AIRPORT FAREWELL: From the food to the sights, my dad had a great time visiting Beijing. And I was glad to show him around.