When I think back to the malls of America, one thing sticks out in my mind - PERSONAL SPACE. Except for those infamous times of year like Black Friday or 3 days until Christmas, malls in the suburbs generally provide more space than people. The malls in China, especially now during the back-to-school craze have more people than items of merchandise. So, when I went shopping on Wednesday afternoon at 2:30pm, I couldn't help but wonder why these people weren't at work!

Trying on skirts was fun. You wait your turn for a changing room. Your "turn" is when there are no more chinese people left to cut in front of you. The changing rooms don't have mirrors so you hve to come out to view yourself in the mirror. Once you've left the room other people go in and use it. Then you wait again in order to change back into your own clothes. It actually makes the process faster than usual (for me). Of course, this means my purchasing decisions are made that much faster and not always to the benefit of my bank account! 

In truth, I feel lucky to have found something I liked (and in my size!) in Chengdu. Most of the merchandise has an Abercrombie and Fitch feel with Teletubby colors.  

Posted by Nelle at 01:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Maybe I am just getting used to it, but I'm enjoying China much more in Chengdu. The pollution is less oppressive - not that I can actually SEE the sun, but still. Only occasionally do you trip over litter on the streets, and even the spitting seems to have calmed down. I'm finally becoming more open to the cultural richness and natural beauty of China.

A cool evening breeze lifts hanging branches of the willow trees that line the city channel. The stone banks of the water way are crowded this evening, but you can only hear the buzz of the cicadas as you pass uner the trees. For one of the first times since I got to China, I sit, relaxed on a stone bench and watch as people pass. I attempt a Level 4 sudoku puzzle while the elder Chinese, dog owners, and fruit vendors take their evening strolls. They often stop, emboldened by my smiles, and point to the book. With my chinese lessons though, I get as far as asking them if they spoke any English and telling them that I didn't speak any Putonghua (Mandarin). Thank goodness for Pimsleur's Mandarin Audio lessons - Unit 1!

Posted by Nelle at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hey!

We haven't fallen off the face of the Earth, I swear! We've been in China for 6 weeks and we've only now, in Chengdu, in Sichuan province in southwestern China, found an internet connection that does not filter out this website. Hence, I thought I'd put up a quick post to prove that everything is A-OK and that we are having a great time. We have so much to write about!

China is an amazing country. Amazingly different, too.  Centuries worth of incredible attractions exist at every turn, and cheap food, souvenirs and accommodations are endless. But as every guidebook and nostalgic expat will lament, recent rapid development and 'modernization' have served to deprive much of the old charm and character from Chinese cities. Pollution, traffic, and construction clog every city we have been to, and side effects of the urban expansion have generally not been handled very well, if at all, by local governments. The surge in urban dwellers have visibly strained the resources of even the capital Beijing, where garbage lines the streets and droughts force hostels to restrict their amount of water usage. I even heard that the Gobi desert is closing in on Beijing (180 km away) due to desertification of over-used farmland and poor water management policies.

Anyway, I don't mean to complain. I guess with billions of people, this place is just suffering some growing pains. We will be staying here in Chengdu for a least a few more days as we wait for our onward train tickets to come through, so we can fill you in on our many adventures in China so far. Stay tuned! 

Posted by Aaron at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We drove for hours and hours a day and the roads are windy, bumpy, rocky and endless. Justing sitting there is exhausting, since there are no seatbelts and we had to remain vigilant to avoid hurting ourselves from large bumps and ditches. Nelle gets motion sick and I don't know how she managed to stay composed. Mongolia is HUGE, and we only saw a very small loop of it in the five days. Valley after valley, vista after vista, the views are stunning. Although after a few days of staring out the windows, mouths agape we got a little bored of it.

Vast green pastures with random herds of animals and small clusters of gers every now and then are typical of the landscape. I truly expected the area to be much drier and "desert-y" than it is; most of it is green rocky steppe. It became more arid the further south we went, but the mini-Gobi sand dunes I spoke of last time still had grass growing on them (which explains my disappointment). Contrary to popular belief only 3% of the Gobi actually has the stereotypical "real" sand dunes, and they were too far south for us to reach in 5 days.

No matter where you go, however, one thing stays the same: Mongolia is covered in poop. It makes sense in retrospect. Given the number of animals (apparently the horse to person ratio here is 13:1) the amount of poop is, I guess, proportional. The entire place smelled of it though. At first it was overwhelming - that fresh manure/farm/stale milk kind of smell - but eventually it got to the point where I couldn't smell it anymore. Perhaps my olfactory senses just gave up... or more likely, they were more occupied with the stink of my own body than with the general atmospheric stink. Anyway, my shoes are covered in the stuff and I can't wait to give them a good scrubdown in China.

We rode camels one evening and that was pretty cool, although it felt strange riding them across grassy plains instead of sandy dunes. The humps of the camels, which I have wondered about my entire life, were disappointing. They were not a soft and comfortable perch from which to direct the camel, as I had envisioned, but rather they were hard like a canteloupe or melon with only a slight "squishiness", and were sparsely covered with long wispy golden hairs. Plus my humps were saggy! They looked like the breasts of a supermodel in her 60's or 70's. Additionally you couldn't lean back against the back hump for support (these are the cooler Bactrian camels with two humps) because it was hard and very uncomfortable when the beast was walking. Sadly, I later learned that saggy humps are a sign of poor camel health.

Camels are quite huge in person and are somewhat intimidating, especially when they get upset. Indeed, one of our camels scratched its face on the post it was tied to while we were saddling up, and it completely flipped out: it reared up on two legs, gnashed its teeth, broke its reigns (which were tied to its nose!), brayed like an giant, demon-possessed donkey, and ran away. Other than that our camels were quite well behaved, and did not spit even once. My camel, named "Samta", did, however, fart precipitously for the entire hour that I was riding.

We also got the chance to ride some Mongolian horses as well, but the saddles were made of wood and actually hurt to sit in. Also, the owner did not give us the ability to ride on our own, which sucked.

The people we've stayed with have been so generous and welcoming. It has been fun interacting with the children especially. With them, smiles and laughter and baby goats are a universal language. Mongolians seemed particularly amused by our Mongolia guidebook (and the sample Mongolian phrases contained within) and the digital camera. I have many pictures of Mongolians on the camera, and I wish there were a way that I could give them printouts of the photos. No doubt they had never seen instant pictures of themselves before, since some acted as though they had never even encountered westerners before. I feel a special connection to the Mongolian people that I have never had with a culture before. While I am sure I have only scratched the surface of their way of life, experiencing how they live, eat and work for a few days has given me the opportunity to walk in their shoes, if ever so briefly.

Seeing a Discovery Channel special cannot begin to capture the excitement of Naadam, the bumpiness of the "roads", the sour tang of airag, the vulnerability of squatting in an open field to poop, or the sound of sheep and goats bleating and farting as they are awoken by the herders at 4:30 am. 

I will be back someday. 

Posted by Aaron at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

First impressions - Rest of Mongolia: beautiful, breathtaking scenery; terrible/non-existent roads; tons of sheep, horses, cattle, goats, etc.; giant blue sky; no one speaks English; Mongolian is an ugly sounding language; "airag" - ugh!

Our tour requirements were: 4 nights / 5 days, Gobi desert, horseback-riding, and camel riding. We certainly got all that, and more than we ever imagined. We got a bright pink jeep 4x4 and a driver named Darien, who spoke approximately between 5 and 8 words of English. It has been frustrating communicating with Darien at times, but sign-language and gestures go a long, long way. He has a good sense of humor, and is very friendly.

By way of pothole-filled roads, dirt tracks, and open grasslands, he has taken us across endless vast expanses of terrain to see the "mini" Gobi desert (barely qualifies as sand dunes in my mind - very dissatisfied), visit the ancient Silk Route capital Kharakorum, sleep by a large waterfall, and spend time with no less than 9 nomadic herder Mongolian families. He taught us bits and pieces of the Mongol language, which according to one author of the Mongolian Lonely Planet, sounds like "two fighting cats hissing and spitting at one another". For example, "bai-aarl-laa" means thank you, "sain-ban-oo" means hello, and "amt-tai" means delicious.

The most interesting, awful, and eye-opening experience was the food: various Mongolian cheeses, milks, and mutton. Most of it, I'll be honest, was pretty awful (especially the hard cheeses and "airag", the fermented mare's milk), but the meat dishes were OK, if repetitive. My favorite dish was pronounced "tsui-van", which was fried sliced dough/pasta strips with mutton, carrots, and onions. Most gers (Mongolian yurt tents) we stopped at offered us airag, which according to custom we were obliged to drink as guests. Apparently it is extremely impolite to refuse a gift or food. That is a shitty rule. Airag is a nasty, sour, tangy, bitter-fermented stew that you sip from a bowl (they don't use cups). I've easily ingested a 1/2 gallon or more of the stuff! :-P

The other crazy food story I have happened the second night by the waterfall, after we showed up unannounced at a herder's ger hoping for some famous Mongolian hospitality. And boy did he deliver! So kind and hospitable was he, that the man went into his flock of sheep, plucked one out animal before my eyes, and killed it beside the ger for dinner. (!) It was one of the most basic, terrifying, and awesome acts I have ever witnessed, and I shall certainly remember it for the rest of my life. The sheep, laid on its back across the herder's lap, bucked and kicked but made no sound as the man deftly made an incision in its chest and stuffed his arm inside to (presumably) grab the beast's heart and kill it. The procedure was quite bloodless, but I still had to shield Nelle's eyes to save her from years of nightmares, I'm sure.

Two hours later, the living, breathing, carefree creature I had seen earlier sat in front of me in a bowl, inside dumplings. I shudder when I think about it; the dumplings were really good though...

Posted by Aaron at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

First impressions - Ulaan Baatar: Dirty, smog-filled air; lurking pickpockets; cheap food and hoste

We spent the first two days in Mongolia to enjoy the Naadam festival as Nelle mentioned in her last post about Mongolia. Naadam is like the Olympics or World Cup for Mongolia, and it features competitions of the three manly man sports of drinking, betting, and drinking. There are also smaller events in wrestling, archery, and horse-racing. We picked up our previously arranged tickets to see the opening ceremonies of the festival, and walked down to the city stadium after a surprisingly cosmopolitan breakfast at a local cafe (Who would have thought: cafe latte only ~$1.50?). We arrived to find a completely packed arena filled with locals and tourists the world over (Naadam is basically the main reason that most foreigners visit Mongolia anyway, I'm sure).

The ceremony, which coincidentally also this year marks the 800th anniversary of the Mongol Empire (!), was incredible!! It completely exceeded any expectations and was on par with the Olympic opening ceremonies, if not more impressive - ok, maybe I'm biased because I got to see it in person. There were thousands of performers, singers, dancers, horsemen, and others in costume. A section of the stands was reserved for people with coordinated colored cards that would form the Mongolian flag and other images. A live orchestra played traditional music. A marching band played triumphantly and the deep tones of ancient "long song" singers resonated through the stands. A legion of traditional Mongol "morin khuur" two-stringed guitar players strumming in unison;  A dizzying array of sights filled the stadium:  hundreds of brightly dressed children performing synchronized dances; acrobatic horsemen showing off flips, trick dismounts, and contortionist moves mid-gallop; the President of Mongolia (I think) speaking to the masses; oxen pulling a giant "ger" around the stadium; groups of warriors and martial artists staging faux battles; women in brilliant dresses waving silk ribbons in the air; even an appearance by ol' Chinggis Khaan himself (who was/is formerly and incorrectly referred to as Genghis Khan). By all accounts it was incredible. Well worth the pains and tight schedules in Russia to see this ceremony.

Click below to see videos I took during the Naadam opening ceremony. You will need the newest version of Windows Media Player to play these WMV files.

Video 1 - 9.4 MB
Video 2 - 10.4 MB
Video 3 - 2.3 MB
Video 4 - 3.6 MB

Outside the stadium was a bevy of souvenir and food stands, which we perused with much excitement until we could no longer stay standing. We staggered back to our pleasant $5/night hostel enamored with Mongolia, and the following day we eagerly hired a driver to take us on a 5 day, 4 night excursion to explore more of our new favorite country.

Posted by Aaron at 08:47 AM | Permalink

After some much needed R&R, Aaron and I are back in action in the capital city of Beijing! Where to start...well, much like China's population, a billion things come to mind. More than any place I've been, this one is alive. It is changing at such a dramatic rate that several times our 2006 guidebook is out of date. Hutongs (or alleyways) are being demolished in favor of wider, more modern roads. The stadium is being renovated in preparation for the 2008 olympics, and nearly all of the prices are rising to meet that occasion as well. Sigh.

There's that famous expression...don't judge a book by its cover. In Beijing the saying should go...don't judge a restaurant by its bitter goose head platter. We've had more than our share of exotic food, and it has been a delicious adventure. The Peking duck at Beijing Roast Duck Restaurant (Dongcheng district) was divine. I never thought fatty duck skin could be a delicacy, but it is! Even though I'm a conservative customer, I've eaten dishes from sweet red bean glutinous rice dumpling to some unidentifiable fried balls on a stick that we affectionately nicknamed "squirrel faces." Of course, there's always KFC and McD's to get you through the week when you're feeling overwhelmed by chicken kidneys, heads, and paws!

Seeing the incredible variety of animals served at restaurants is incredible. Even if you're a vegetarian you have to respect the chef's ability to prepare every organ and limb of an animal to sell. Waste not want not. However, I am less impressed with the treatment of animals BEFORE they make it to the dinner table. Actually, what I'm trying to get at here is the animals at the Zoo. The Beijing Zoo is a disturbing animal prison where people regularly throw trash at the inmates. Check out this photo of the alligator. That's actually a piece of trash ON his body.

This was not the worst of it. Tigers, lions, and jaguars isolated in small concrete cells with prison bars paced back and forth while hordes of Chinese (I assume) tourists shouted taunts to incite roars or hisses. "Bear hill" consisted of three concrete trenches for the polar, brown, and mongolian bears to walk around. These trenches were littered with garbage and several onlookers from above would squirt water at the bears. Only the Pandas had an exhibit that didn't make your stomach turn. Actually, correction...the common raccoon had a really sweet little environment. Much more luxurious than you would expect for an animal so "common" to Americans.  All in all, it was outrageous, and I mean that in the true sense of the word. I am outraged. This Zoo is what you would expect if you went back 100 years in a time machine. Even worse than the artificial habitats, was the behavior of the spectators. There was absolutely no respect for the animals. We saw a screaming crowd scare a tiger into running out of his wading pool to a steel door on the other side of his enclosure and paw frantically at the door to find a place to hide. The same behavior was seen in the tigers indoors pawing at the steel doors to escape the shouting hordes. The only animals that seemed content with their environment were the rodents, but, as we all know, rodents will live just about anywhere with food.

One last interesting note, the extensive petting zoo included ungulates of all shapes and sizes (I never thought I would actually pet a gazelle!) but also all the different breeds of dogs! Having raised a beagle I found it strange to see a few of them at the zoo! 

Posted by Nelle at 08:27 AM | Permalink

The railway saga started out on a late June evening from Moscow aboard an overnight sleeper train to St. Petersburg. The car was clean, and simply and neatly styled in a curious palette of lime green. Doors, carpeting, curtains, provodnitsa (train attendant), and bed sheets all matched to a tee. Our four berth "Kupe" 2nd-class compartment was stocked surprisingly well. We each received a kit containing toothbrush and toothpaste, eyemask, floss, facial wipes, and a set of utensils. There also were 4 pewter mugs and glasses for the samovar (hot water dispenser),  four bottles of water, and a boxed meal of reasonable recognition for each of us. Meals would come twice a day free of charge (well, not exactly free...), and a comfortable and convenient, if overpriced restaurant car lay two carriages away. The 4 beds hung from the wall on either side of the tiny room  with a small table between them against the window. In theory the top bunks are better for sleeping because the bottom ones are used as benches once any of the four occupants wakes up. In reality, none of the bunks are good for sleeping because a) they are marginally less comfortable than an old pullout sofa mattress, plus b) constant noises from bunkmates talking (or sleep-talking, as it were), moving, and eating, and c) perpetual stopping, starting, jerking, bumping, and clanging of the train all conspire against your good night's rest.

The bathrooms were surprisingly modern, with a standard western toilet, mirror, and wash basin, not unlike any normal aircraft lavatory. One key difference, though, was the lack of any sort of real internal plumbing. Used water from the wash basin drained directly down beneath the railcar on to the tracks, and -you guessed it- so does the toilet. In fact, when you step on the foot pedal to "flush", a small trap door opens and you may witness your waste's evacuation down a small chute, through the end of which green grass and shrubbery can be seen whizzing by. As a sensible consequence of this crude system, the bathroom is closed and locked by the provodnitsa starting about 10 minutes before any station stop until about 10 minutes after. This is all fine and good except when stopping at border crossings, which can mean the bathroom is inaccessible for over 6 hours.

The days passed rather slowly and tended to blend together, especially on our train from Yekaterinberg to Irkutsk. The scenery consists mostly of large grassy fields and rolling grassy hills, with intermittent groves of white birch trees and small shanty shack villages. Siberia is a surprisingly pretty place (although in winter it surely becomes the wasteland I imagined), but after a while it became difficult to remain interested looking out the windows for any length of time. Of course the omnipresent coat of filth and grime that covered all of the windows made it even less appealing, and added lovely brown stained artifacts to many of our train pictures in our photo album. Most of the time was endured by:

• sleeping
• playing sudoku
• reading from the Trans-Siberian Handbook that my Dad carried
• talking to other English-speaking members of the carriage
• trying to learn a few more new Russian or Mongolian words
• playing "War", "Spades", or "American" (a card game we learned from two friendly Norwegians)
• simply staring blankly into space or out the window  

The train would stop somewhere every hour or three and we would get a chance to stetch our legs by getting off the train and exploring the station platform area. Usually a few vendors would be hawking their goods (i.e. ramen, ice cream, dried fish, stuffed animals, champagne flutes, you name it...), but there wouldn't be that much else to do except fret about the poor quality of the station bathrooms or the possibility of missing the train's departure. Twice along the route we had more lengthy stops, in Yekaterinberg and Irkutsk/Lake Baikal, but those are to be discussed in another blog entry.

The scenery did have some interesting spells, such as around the southern edge of beautiful Lake Baikal, and the first morning after entering the steppes of Mongolia. BUT the most "exciting" way to break up the monotony was to enjoy an afternoon/evening/dead of night border crossing ordeal going between Russia and Mongolia.  We reached the border Russian town about 5:30 pm. and waited while:

1. Russian authorities detached the Russian restaurant car.
2. Immigration officials collected passports.
3. Border patrol searched every compartment for stowaways.
4. Customs officials came around to collect customs forms.
5. Immigration officials returned passports.
6. Various other hemming and hawing took place.

We were allowed to get off the car at certain points to use the incredible "bathroom" in the station, but mostly we just sat in the car. Occaisionally it rained. At one point we got a good picture of a rainbow above the immigration building at the Russian border post, as if in celebration of our departure from the Motherland. Finally around 9:00 pm we passed through an electrified fence (!) marking the border with Mongolia. We then proceeded to repeat steps #1-6  on the Mongolian side. When all was said and done it was 11:30 pm. The onboard bathroom was locked the whole time too, as discussed above. We didn't really get going again until after midnight, and man we were exhausted.

Days later on the Chinese side of the border, we spent several hours in a rail warehouse while the Russian carriages were individually lifted up on jacks and the Russian bogies (wheels) were swapped out for the more svelte Chinese ones. This is because the Soviet railroad tracks in Russia and Mongolia are a wider gauge than everywhere else in the world. Though long and mostly boring, the few minutes or the process while we were being lifted up were pretty sweet. I even took a video of one of the wheels being changed. (Click here for the video.) Sorry the video is sideways, so you'll have to turn your head! :(

After later changing trains in the remarkably non-descript concrete wasteland industrial town of Jining, we awoke to find ourselves gliding along through a beautiful misty mountain landscape on the outskirts of Beijing.

Stay tuned, more to come from Beijing soon!

Posted by Aaron at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)