Live Journaling

I haven't had much time to blog or think or to write in my journal since we arrived in China, so I'm just going to spill my guts a bit here and type about whatever comes to my mind.

First, I should mention that we're currently in Chengdu, having bought 2 plane tickets from Beijing this morning and scrapping two of our plans: A) we didn't go to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Army and B) we didn't go to Ti'an to climb the sacred mountain there, Tai Shan.

Although Beijing wasn't bad, we didn't really have a good time there. For one thing, everything in the whole city is under construction, as I mentioned previously, and everyone was either rude or trying to sell us something. Basically, we didn't really get a good feeling for the city until Thursday and Friday. But by then, we were looking to get out of there. The whole place was just so oppressive and stiffling. Compared to a place like Tokyo (and even LA), the public transportation was abysmal (it was slow, dirty, clunky, super crowded, and didn't go anywhere near anything interesting except Tiananmen Square). There was trash everywhere (except in The Square and surrounding area), and all of the historic districts are being torn down for rectangular, cement buildings. For the first few days in China, the only bright spot for us was the visit to the Great Wall (non-annotated pics that don't do the Wall justice are here).

Towards the end of last week, however, we began to find the groove and vibe of the city. We saw people gathered in the street (literally, on the sidewalks and in parks) dancing. In the parks, we saw what seemed to be an impromptu gathering of singers and musicians using classical Chineese instruments to what sounded like revolutionary songs! It was excellent. We also found a few good restraunts, had tea at a place called Junk Tea House where to Chinese girls continually filled up our cups with delicious tea and spoke perfect English to us (they were English students in Beijing), and saw a showin of the famed Chinese Acrobats at the Chaoyang Theater. Despite this, we still both felt kind of disconnected from the city. The excellent experiences were over-shadowed by the grime and rudeness and just the vast distances of Beijing. Tokyo, for example, is also a HUGE sprawling city, but the neighborhoods all have character and distances are traversed easily and quickly using and excellent subway system. The same can not be said for Beijing, although today (Saturday), I find that my memories of Beijing are more positive than they were even this morning, when I gladly bid the city farewell.

On Friday, having burnt ourselves out on the capital, we spent all day travelling (slowly) around the city trying to buy train to plane tickets out of Beijing. When nothing materialized, we ended up at a Pakistani restraunt where Chinese women danced and sang Pakistani songs flawlessly. Several tables full of Indian and Pakistani travelers were singing along with the girls and the place was enjoyable, even if it was expensive and not the food wasn't that tasty. Then this morning, we just took a taxi out to the airport, bought two tickets in cash, and flew out here to Chengdu, which is totally awesome! I feel like I should have come here three days ago (though I would have missed out on the best experiences we had in Beijing). We're staying at a place called Dragon Town Hostel, which serves good food and is located in a hundreds-of-years-old Qing Dynasty era building. The street it's on is under heavy construction (in fact, we saw 2 guys diging underground by candle-light) and most of the buildings are demolished or under heavy reconstruction (ala Beijing), but few very lively bars and restaurants remain. Tomorrow we'll explore the city and on Monday we're going to try to go the Panda Kindergarten (just google it and watch the videos... then you'll know why we're going there!).

'Till then, enjoy these old pictures from Japan that I haven't posted yet.

Fuji 5 Lakes

Fuji 5 Lakes (second set)

-Mike.