Many months later. . .

It was about this time last year (give or take a week) that I FINALLY received the official acceptance into the SIT China: Yunnan Province program.

So I decided it was a fitting time to finally put into blog form some notes that have been on my desktop for the past 6 months. (It's crazy to think its been that long since I was in China!)

I probably postponed writing a post far too long.

Just some direct memories copied and pasted from my sticky notes sometime in December.
End of Kunming- last night dinner
teachers were hilarious- LOVE luo laoshi
We went to a Xinjiang restaurant that was awesome. It was like Chinese/Uygher/Middle Easter dinner and a show complete with beer drinking competitions, belly dancers, and dancing on tables (classier than it sounds).
The last segment of the program was in Beijing. Especially after being in Kunming it was FREEZING cold - saw "snow" for the first time this year.
Went back to my old "stomping grounds" - even helped teach an English class
(It was really good for me helping me see that I've grown?)
Summer Palace in Winter
This was my second time at the Summer Palace and I do have to say - its quite a spot regardless the season.
I finally got to see the Forbidden City and stand in Tian'anmen square. (Yes, I did live in Beijing for 2 months and never go there. . .) And now I know that apparently Mao's body can only be viewed from 8am to 12 noon -- so we missed that.
Forbidden City- not so forbidden anymore- TONS of ppl - and once you get over just the grandness/ the sheer SIZE of it all. . . I'm glad I've seen it, to say that I have, however, box officially checked.

Triumphant moment. I do not believe that I ever shared the ironic story that not only had my roommate and friend Kara been in Beijing the same summer that I had been, but lived in the same area. She was a student at the same university that I had been teaching english. Anyway, while in Beijing the first time Kara had loved this Russian restaurant and was intent on finding it and going back. She found it. We all went back. And it was DELICIOUS.
Other food related triumphant moment. I took some of my SIT friends to my FAVORITE Dai Restaurant across the street from where I used to live. The staff there somehow managed to fit our whole group in and it was DELICIOUS.
OH and the peking duck restaurant
All in all it was a good experience to be back in Beijing. I realized how much of a Southern accent I had gotten, the Beijing "er" eluded me much more this time. (And how many of my favorite memories were food related; I gained 5 pounds just being in Beijing ).
After Beijing the group began to go our separate ways: Ashley, Kara, Aly and Joe all still in Beijing. . . the rest of us went to Hong Kong and from there Kelli and I split from the remainder of the group to explore Hong Kong a couple days.
I don't know what I was expecting, but I actually QUITE liked Hong Kong. It has such a good balance of East and West, though I would venture that its a bit more on the Western side. British colonialism was awful, etc. but it sure did one thing right - Hong Kong. (Save the pollution) But anyway, fun, cosmopolitan, bustling city right on the water. Yes, the place is basically one giant shopping mall- but I liked it anyway. Kelli and I crammed an impressive amount into our 48 hours: The peak (even though the pollution haze inhibits completely panoramic views), ferried to Lamma Island, ate dim sum (i actually had dim sum two days in a row. . . guilty face?), went to the Art Museum and did a little shopping.
Our hostel situation was an interesting one- aka, one of the most sketchy places ever. So we came to Hong Kong with the address of the "New Garden Hostel" in Mirador Mansion, found Mirador Mansion and then realized we didn't know which floor the hostel was one- the elevator guy told us to go to floor three. Well, apparently floor THREE is merely the Garden Hostel, the hallways of which were sketch (that's really the best word i can think of without getting too graphic) but the sheets were clean (at least as best as we could tell they were) and it was CHEAP for Hong Kong. I then found out when I was looking for place to stay on my last night, when Kelli wouldn't be with me, was that the whole time we had intended to go to the NEW Garden hostel on the THIRTEENTH floor. . .sigh. I stayed there the last night and it was absolute relative luxury. :-)
The Hong Kong public transportation system is awesome btw.


And now I'm on my way back home- I've written most of this at some point between LAX, Dallas, and Philly.
I was/am sooo excited to get home. And then I got to LAX and was like. . . hmmm I'd forgotten how rude, dirty and unattractive America can be as well. I think maybe I just don't like LA. . .
But my Cathay Pacific flight was quite comfy. . . between the Tylonol PM and the awesome entertainment system that they had it really wasn't that bad. Its just always weird to arrive somewhere technically "before" the time you left? (I left Hong Kong at 4pm on the 17th and "went back in time;" arriving at LAX at 1ishpm.

Thanks to all who read/skimmed my blog. (Congrats if you made it to the end of this post!)
I was truly lucky/blessed to have this experience just wanted to Thank all of you who helped along the way. You know who you are. <3

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Truth or Fiction
Some Clarifications about Chinese culture from my observations while abroad.

Truth- they DO use MSG. It's called weijing and they put it in EVERYTHING. Unfortunately, I'm allergic, but I think i've built up a tolerance for small amounts. (During my homestay, I got a headache almost every afternoon for a week until I made the connection).

False- Fortune cookies? I think its probably one of the few things in this world that is NOT made in China. Maybe its a Cantonese thing? but I doubt it.

All Chinese peoples/Asians look alike - True AND False

They eat rice at every meal - Yes, they do eat a lot of rice. But they also like to switch it up with rice noodles, and mantou (bread made from rice flour). And they do occasionally use corn flour in things.

Dog is not a common dish in most of China, you can find it if you look for it, but its more endemic to only a couple regions.

There still is a significant portion of the population that rides bicycles. Less and Less people are, and especially in Kunming many people have the fancy moped types, rather than the typical Chinese one-speed.


I love answering questions :-) Let me know if you think of one.

Week 13: Xishuangbanna

Ever since our week-long excursion “way back when” I had been wanting to go to Xishuangbanna. I didn’t have a particularly compelling reason why, other than I love pineapple rice and wanted to see the elephants. However, instead of going to Xishuangbanna, I went to Yuanyang and Bamei. No regrets about that, but I still wanted to go see this more “South-east Asian” and tropical area of Yunnan. The poor other SIT-ers that had to listen to me go on about this, but finally, “push-came-to shove” and I decided last Thursday that I was going to leave for Jinghong (the capital of Xishuangbanna the next day.
I had many reasons for justifying this trip to myself (I’ve been wanting to go; birthday present to myself, an exercise in self-reliance, etc.). And ultimately, I’m SO glad I went. It ended up being not exactly what I expected-but what I needed and better because it ended up being a really good chance for me to practice Chinese.

The hostel from the entrance; the "jungle oasis" in the middle of the city

I arrived in Jinghong Saturday morning after boarding a 10 PM bus from Kunming. We got in JUST before 7 and I ended up making friends with the three other foreigners that had been on my bus (all French) as we set off, copies of Lonely Planet in hand, to find a trekking place and/or a hostel. The thing about Lonely Planet is that its great in helping you find cool places, but once you get there- its not so helpful. We spent a good part of the morning wandering around, but fortunately we found Banna café, a place that had been recommended to the French as having really good treks.

Dai Village as seen on the bike ride

Initially, I almost got talked into do this awesome-sounding trek that included seeing lots of jungle, spending one night in a Hanyi minority village and another night in a Dai village on the way to essentially the border China/Myanmar, but I really had it in my mind that I wanted to go for a bike ride Saturday afternoon, trek Sunday and come back Monday in time to get a sleeper bus back to Kunming, to be back in time for my birthday. I ended up being able to get a guide all to myself for my “two-day, one-night” trek, and even though she could speak a little English, we spoke only Chinese. (Not that we spoke that much; we were limited to my Chinese vocabulary). The first part of the trek was pretty easy, just walking along roads through a Dai couple villages and the ‘Banna countryside. We made it to “THE lake” (I have the name of the lake in characters, but I forget the exact meaning) in time for a late lunch. Then, apparently, the real trek started.

THE Lake and me on the touristy side of the lake

Our goal was a Bulong village some distance past the other side of the lake, so we trekked through the trees along the bank of the lake, then through some rice fields, then through some sugar can fields, more rice fields, then finally made it to a road. We walked along the road for another hour, and then, tired, sweaty, dusty, and covered in spider webs (I kept walking into them when I wasn’t physically capable of watching my step AND looking slightly above eye-level at all the spider webs) arrived at the Bulong village. I also somehow managed to collect a ridiculous amount of burrs at the hem of my pants and on my shoelaces.

My second favorite picture from Yunnan

My guide, Xiao Yu, was also “Bulongzhuren,” knew our host family and could speak our host family dialect. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason this was the second day electricity had been out in this village. It was an interesting picture, because although they couldn’t use the electric rice cooker, they still cooked everything in a fire pit in the kitchen, and throughout dinner-prep and dinner I saw numerous cell phones in the hands of all the people going and coming. I don’t know if this was a normal thing or a result of the electricity, but 11 (!) of us ate together by candlelight.
Though they did (usually) have electricity, apparently, they didn’t have toilets. Not even the squat kind. That’s always awkward and you ask for the bathroom, are told where to go, and then look around stupidly before realizing . . . OH. . . OHHHHHHH, yes, umm, okay.
The next morning we hired a motorcycle to take us back to the main town. The view going along the road of THE lake as the mist was rising, with palm trees, rice field, pu’er tea plants and mountains in the background was BEAUTIFUL. From the main town we caught a ride back to Jinghong in time for lunch.

Xiao Yu and I at 'Banna cafe

My “plan” ended up working out really well (if I do say so myself), and I made it back to Kunming early morning on my 21st birthday. I had another mini-adventure finding the correct city bus back to Min Da, but still managed to make it back to my dorm by 8:15.

Artwork, cheese, crackers, and chocolate compliments of Kara

Thanks to many, many people (special “shout-outs” go to James and Kara) I had a GREAT 21st birthday. It was DEFINITELY memorable (or well, at least most of it. . .)

Week 12: Parades and Prague Cafe

So I'm UBER excited to be back in Kunming. Kara and I had to fight to get our old dorm back. (It was prime dorm real estate; one of the few that always could receive wireless signals to pirate). But as often happens in China, you have to be careful. Things change fast here. We weren't even gone three weeks, but when we came back our special bubble was burst - there were so many more westerners on Ming Da's campus (Its a weird part of the westerner studying abroad in China syndrome- you get irrationally possessive of the "territory"). Then on the nearby "Culture Street" with a lot of international restaurants, they started doing construction on the street and completely renovating one of the shops. And then! I went to use my laptop after spending the morning on the internet and I found that the internet wasn't working anymore. (This means even more time and money spent in cafes with wireless).
But the weather is great - its November and I could have worn just a T-shirt and jeans yesterday and have been comfortable.
I'm officially in the Independent Study project phase of the program, which is challenging, yet, at this point not too stressful yet. (despite the fact that I only have one contact. . . so okay, maybe its a little stressful) Its really going to be a challenge for me, in self-discipline, self-motivation- all that type of thing. I don't see so much writing the paper to be the problem . . . just motivating myself and getting my self focused and out there to get the information to write it.
My topic is something along the lines of just examining how environmentally friendly Kunming and rural households are, and trying to figure out why they conserve water/energy/etc or why not?
(when i put it like this it doesn't sound overly exciting, but, perhaps because I'm not familiar with a lot of the methods that the Chinese are using, its at least interesting to me, especially in a time where its rumored that China has finally surpassed the United States in greenhouse gas emissions. . .)

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Basically, at this point I'm doing exactly what everyone tells you not to do. I've been holing myself up in Prague Cafe because it has good wireless, an AMAZING breakfast attempting to get research done and failing miserably.
Fortunately, Aly and I have been running in the mornings on a fairly regular basis, so my life isn't completely without structure. I don't have much to do, but I've been getting up at 7:50 to run (and I don't even have class at 8 AM!!). Crazy. I know. Sometimes I don't recognize my China-self. But then I spend the rest of the day just bumming around Kunming, to balance it out.

Our first Saturday back, Min Da invited us to participate in the "Opening Ceremony" of the Min Da Games, apparently sporting competitions between the different university departments. We had to march, and wave in matching polo shirts. It was very "China."



As part of my research, I need to interview your average Kunming citizen. What better place to talk to some Chinese people I thought than this famous "English corner" I'd been hearing about. I was picturing a cafe somewhere, where Westerners and Chinese people met at a designated time; I could pull out my laptop and type up their answers to my carefully planned questions (written up in both English and Chinese). I should have known better- I am still in China. English Corner ended up being on an actual street corner of Green Lake Park. It was MOBBED. And as soon as people saw me approach I was like descended upon. I was lucky I had a pad of paper with me and I just started scribbling down some answers, to questions somewhat resembling my initial ones. It was definitely an experience, and fortunately, I got a Chinese friend out of it.

Week 11 – Election in Lijiang!

"To all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright, tonight we have proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms, or the scale of our wealth but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope!"
Obama’s first speech as President-elect

Our small group of thirteen has, fortunately, been quite politically aware. Despite the fact that we are in China, we were NOT going to let that keep us TOO out of the loop. We knew we were going to be in Lijiang during the elections; we had it calculated (even with the time change) and gotten a discussion section moved back so we could sit at an internet café and obsessively refresh our browsers as the results came in. It was compulsive. Even after we knew Obama had won (lots of hugs and excited yelling) we still kept watching to see how the unconfirmed states, like North Carolina, were doing.

Obama Victory!
(Mom I think I'm still skyping with you as this picture was taken)

So that’s probably how I’ll always remember Lijiang, as the place that I was for the 2008 election.

HeiLong Lake (Black Dragon Lake)

Statue of Mao right next to our hotel

Though the other stuff that will remain as well. We did have a discussion we had with the Chinese millionaire. He’s a 79 year old Naxi (the local minority nationality) who spent 21 years in jail and is one of the strangest, most self-absorbed individuals I have ever met. He was put in jail because he’s a musical “genius” (by his own humble assessment) and had conducted numerous Western orchestras, including one of the best in Beijing (maybe Shanghai, idk). However, after jail he timed the tourism development of Lijiang correctly, sold his house and bought a huge piece of property and opened up two theaters, one in Lijiang to contribute to his millions and one on his property. He REPEATEDLY reminded us that he was the “only man in all of China to have a theater on his property,” in which he gave free concerts.

Xuan Ke's Personal Theater

Lijiang is essentially like the epitome of Yunnan province Chinese tourist culture. It has made many people (like Xuan Ke, the odd Chinese millionaire) very wealthy, however, it has also had a huge impact on the local culture. Much of the Naxi minority culture has become commodified, and many Naxis have moved out of the old town because it was more financially lucrative to rent out their houses. Others have had to leave because of the noise and crowds. Most of the “Naxi” people in Lijiang’s Old Town are now actually just Han Chinese dressed up as Naxi ren for the tourists.

Lijiang Old Town at Night

Oh yeah, and apparently we started my birthday celebration month, because before the group split up to go on their separate ISP adventures I got a Chinese cake! Complete with an icing rabbit (because I'm the year of the rabbit).

Week 10: Yes, I am getting college credit to do this.

I have to stop and think about that sometimes, especially when I get to go to places like Zhongdian, aka Shangri-la. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of Zhongdian. The Chinese government changed the name to Shangri-la, in hopes of convincing people it was the paradise talked about in Journey to the West. It’s the capital of the Tibetan Automous Prefecture, the majority of the population is Tibetan and was reputed to be the lost paradise on earth. This general area of Yunnan (the way northwest) and northern Sichuan province are the closest you can get to Tibet without needing all the permits and such to go in. In the past, when there’s been “Tibetan uprisings” its been hard for Westerner to get permission to go into these areas. Yet its also a Chinese city, and most Chinese cities often have this similar look and feel to them. To reiterate, I wasn’t sure if I would be awed or disappointed.
IT WAS AWESOME!!! I think the only thing I have against it is that it’s really cold (again, the high altitude).

Group with Living Buddha of Songzanlisi

Songzanlisi- Tibetan Buddhist Temple

Our first day in Zhongdian was Halloween and Sam’s birthday. I think we were the only people in Zhongdian that dressed up for Halloween. Our resources were rather limited, but somehow we managed to pull together excellent gypsy costumes, which we wore to dinner and got looks not only from the Chinese people, but also all the Europeans.
Before dinner we stopped by the Zhongdian culture center and had a lecture from the director and the master tangka painter-in-residence. He was almost finished this absolutely STUNNING red tangka depicting a compassion Buddha and four nationalities coming to the Buddha for compassion and wisdom. It was commissioned for a temple in Sichuan province, to help them rebuild after the earthquake. (*tangka’s are ancient Tibetan Buddhist art pieces, depicting various elements or stories in Tibetan Buddhism, it takes a lot of training, because the masters must learn the philosophy as well as the craft.)
The night’s celebrations were definitely memorable, despite the fact that we started off the night at a bar to celebrate Sam’s 21st birthday. We ended up getting invited by the Zhongdian center director to the Tibetan performance hall of one of his friends. And HERE, one of the other guests (who is apparently an angry drunk) ended up storming the stage, stealing the microphone from the performer, going on an angry rant in Chinese before throwing the microphone on the floor and then tossing a beer at the Zhongdian culture center director! We left soon after, but it made one memorable capstone to the evening.
The next day we went to the largest Tibetan Buddhist temple in this part of the Tibetan region, Songzanlisi, and met with the living Buddha there. Then we went to a Tibetan orphanage. The orphanage was tons of fun. True to form, they put on a performance, but some of the kids were REALLY talented performers. It’s a unique place. None of the children are adopted; the entire orphanage is their family with a “mom” and an “uncle.” The kids seemed really happy, and really took care of each other. We played duck, duck, goose! with them and they were great at making sure no one was left out.

At the Tibetan Orphanage

In Zhongdian, I had one of my many “Alison” moments. I knew that my debit card was going to expire, however, I’ve used it ONCE in the past two plus months and had pretty much forgotten about it. It expired the end of October, I tried for the first time to withdrawal money on November 2nd. . . sigh.
The next morning we went out into the Tibetan countryside to a much smaller temple- Dabaoshan. The countryside outside of Zhongdian is stunning; you have to get outside the city, but you immediately understand why so many people could argue this area is Shangri-la. The temple was a small one, but the scenic drive out made the trip worthwhile. Also, this temple was cool to see just for the fact that it was one of the first that I saw that had a picture of the Dalai Lama on the alter!! Our teacher told us they were able to get away with this because it wasn’t a tourist spot. So cool. . .

Dabaosi
(yes that is a mountain goat)

I also don’t feel like a complete poser, because I bought my set of Tibetan prayer flags at this temple, so I can tell myself mine are kinda-sorta actually from Tibet. ☺

After Dabaoshan we went to bathe in hot springs and just relaxed and steamed for an hour. Like I said. . . indirectly, I’m getting credit for all this.

Week 9: 今天下雨。 。 。

今天下雨。 。 。 每天下雨。
Jintian xiayu. . .meitian xiayu. (Rain today, rain everyday).

We left Dali early on Saturday and headed to Jianchuan county to visit Shibaoshan (Rock Treasure Mountain) to stay at the temple there before heading to Shaxi for our rural home-stays. It was drizzling when we arrived and this temple was much more rustic. The bathroom was actually a bit nicer/cleaner. . . however it was a three minute walk, out of the temple hotel and down a path. (Scary/NOT fun in the middle of the night!) We went for a walk in the drizzle after we arrived, to see what else was on the mountain and/or see the monkeys which we had been told lived on Shibaoshan. We made it all the way up and then almost back to the hotel and then we saw them. The monkeys. I’ve decided that I don’t like monkeys. Especially when at some point the Chinese decided that it would be okay to feed them peanuts and Styrofoam looking chips and they have no fear of humans. It ended up being fine. Some people fed them. I preferred to put my zoom lens to use and viewed them from afar.

Monkeys from afar

The next day we went to the other side of the mountain and visited the famous grottos of Shibaoshan, it’s a pretty historical site as it is proof of the spread of Buddhism from India into China, was heroically saved from destruction by one of the local leaders during the Cultural Revolution, is potentially the spot where some Nanzhao kings are buried, AND has the oddest grotto- a stone carving of a mysterious “female reproductive organ” that could either be part of Buddhism or the influence of the local Bai culture.

The picture that I wasn't supposed to take, but took before I saw the no photographs sign. I'm kinda worried that I'm going to get some bad karma for putting this up, but I figure the art should be shared.

From there we walked down the other side of the mountain into Shaxi. It was raining/drizzling the whole time and was made an mini-adventure by the fact that at a couple points the path had been washed away and we had to hop across the rocks to get to the next part. When we got to the village of Shaxi I was met by the home-stay mom and she lead me to our house. I unpacked and went out to awkwardly “hang out” with the group of women shucking corn on our porch. I tried to help but they kept feeding me the smaller nobs that they had been cooking on the little coal fire at their feet.
Eventually, the time came when I needed to use the bathroom – it ended up being the outhouse outside of the courtyard, around the side of the house and on the far corner of the garden, next to the pigs. Seeing how it rained everyday, this got to be a pain because at night I’d have to lug my flashlight and an umbrella to the outhouse.
Despite the fact it was raining, or perhaps because of it, I had an awesome first day in Shaxi. Because it was raining, everyone essentially had a day of rest. Thus, I spent a good part of the afternoon watching women make giant yue bing. (Mooncakes, like for Moon Festival, except these ones actually tasted good). It was a really interesting process to watch! Americans or Europeans have the motto – “too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the soup” or something like that. But there were four women in that kitchen, three of them working together to make these ENOURMOUS yuebing cakes in a Chinese style dutch oven (the Chinese don’t use ovens often). When it was finished baking one woman would cover the flat-bottomed cast iron basin with a piece of wood and then flip the whole, cast-iron mold, moon-cake and board- ON TO HER HEAD! And then a second woman would take the cast iron thing off woman #1’s head and woman number one had a right-side turned up moon-cake on a board.

The part of the kitchen where mama zuofan he women chifan.

The entrance to the house

After a meeting at the cultural center, I walked back with a flashlight in hand, to my host family’s house to watch TV with my host mom and little sister (meimei), then went to bed, and woke up the next morning to more rain. This was to be the pattern of my life in Shaxi. If it hadn’t been raining we were supposed to help out our families the fields, however, it rained every day, more or less constantly. (Besides, our academic director essentially told us we’d only last an hour maximum in the field). It just gave us more time with our homestay families, more wireless internet time and no excuse not work on our Shaxi Study projects. My project ended up being on the development of eco-tourism in Shaxi. (Shaxi is at an interesting place where they want more tourism, to increase Shaxiren’s standards of living, but they don’t want to turn into a Dali or a Lijiang, places in which tourism overcommercialized the respective minority cultures –it’s a delicate balance.)

Restored ancient theater

I didn’t know who my homestay dad was until 3 days after I arrived. In case it was a sensitive subject I didn’t want to attempt such a conversation, especially between my broken Chinese and my host mom’s Bai accent. (I had difficulty understanding when she asked me if I wanted to watch TV, (it sounded like kan di si. .. . rather than kan dian shir. . .) much less complicated topics. But apparently I did have a Shaxi dad, but he’s a migrant worker in Kunming, in a place I’d actually heard of, an amusement park near our university.
Leaving Shaxi was sad. Despite the rain we had a really good set-up. The rural setting, washing your face in the morning in a basin of water heated on the stove, etc. was novel and the restored architecture of Shaxi is absolutely charming. We had the best of both words because we had this AND we could go to the cultural center and get a hot shower and use wireless internet. And my homestay family was just adorable and really, really welcoming to me. I felt much more like a part of the family in my Shaxi homestay, than I did in my Kunming family. And as much as it limited conversation, I enjoyed not being able to fall back on English, and the challenge of explaining things/holding conversation with my host mom and her friends. We were able to communicate the important stuff and that was all that mattered. It was also really sweet that the day we left, everyone’s homestay families sent us off with a bag of goodies. Mine included some apples and pears, freshly boiled eggs, and of course, slices of the homemade yuebing, made on my first day.

Mama, meimei, he wo

We got back on the bus for the ride to Zhongdian. . and before we even made it half-way there the skies had cleared.

Me in the rain with my trusty (albeit slightly bent) umbrella; the ancient restored bridge in the background

Week 8: The NW Yunnan Adventure Begins. . .

I know. I know. I’m way behind on the blogging. I don’t even know where to start. So I’m going to pretend like it’s the end of week 8 and see how it goes from there.
Tuesday morning we left Kunming for Jizu Shan, the first destination on our two and a half week "excursion." (Excursion is proving to be a fancy word for "vacation" where we go to cool places and see the sights.) Our program directors hadn’t taken students to this mountain (the 5th Holiest in China) in nearly 10 years, so we didn’t quite know what to expect.
Fun fact: Jizu Shan translates into English as Chicken foot mountain. Not a very attractive name for the place that honestly stands out in my memory as one of the most picturesque places that we went to on this trip (and Yunnan is a picturesque place in general). The sunrise and sunsets were absolutely stunning. Our first day we drove to a temple that was about a third of the way up the mountain and stayed in temple rooms. We had been warned that they would be “simple” conditions, and so we began the pattern of “roughing it” the first night (no showers/warm water, bathrooms outside) and then staying at hotels with hot water the next. However, there were electric heaters, which now have a VERY fond place in my heart. We spent the night there, and after breakfast saw a demonstration on Daoist taiji before we began the trek up the mountains. From the temple we could either walk all the way up (supposedly a 3 hour trek, which actually, according to those that did it was more like 2 hours) or take mules part of the way up and then either take a cable car or walk the rest of the way up (still reputed to be quite the hike). I opted for the mule and then the hike. (I wanted the exercise). Riding mules is one of those things that seems like it would be a great idea, but then after 20 minutes, you’re ready to be at the destination as its not the most comfy ride.

Almost at the top of the moutain- typical Asian Victory pose

The hike up was really good exercise, we kept climbing up and around, until suddenly we were at the temple!

The set of stairs that went STRAIGHT up- fortunately it evened out a bit after this.

Yet, after arriving there isn’t much to do until dinner, it’s just the mountain top and the temple. So I wandered around the ridge. Good and bad idea – there were LOTS more steps involved (and my legs were not used to so much “StairMaster” action. However, the Tibetan prayer flags waving in the wind/answering prayers were an impressive sight due to the sheer volume and come sunset time this area I had explored behind the temple was the BEST place to see the sunset.


That night, because our program is so small, all thirteen of us were able to crowd into one of our hotel rooms and watched Star Wars: Return of the Jedi together. It was quite adorable. The next day I dragged myself out of my electric heater warmed bed (it was really cold- we were at like 11-12,000 ft elevation) because I was determined to see the sunrise and I’m SO glad I did. A group of us joined some Buddhist faithful praying/chanting at the rail. The Daoist priest who we had met the day before played his flute as the sun came up. . . and finally the sun rose. And I got my “Chinese tourist” picture.

My Chinese tourist picture

After sunrise and breakfast, we took the cable cars as far as we could down the mountain then walked the rest of the way down, to get on the bus and head to Dali. Dali was the capital of the Nanzhao Kingdom way back when in the Tang Dynasty (or was it Song? I still don’t know. . . I think it was Tang). Anyway, the city is now quite modern, but the Old City is a big tourist site because everything within the old city gates has been restored and looks pretty. Dali was just a place for us to relax for a little bit, see an historic city, and our last chance to find places with Western food, etc. before going into our rural homestays in Shaxi. The big story of Dali was that we NEEDED to vote, only one person’s absentee ballot had arrived before we left, so we had to resort to the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot. It ended up being just a really positive chain reaction. Joe (from North Carolina, the surprising swing state) asked me about this write-ballot that I had been talking about and reminded me that I needed to mail mine. Then Courtney’s like, oh yeah! And so we head off to find a print shop, and Aly comes along to help us out. It was quite the ordeal to get everything printed out and sorted. Then we went back to the hotel to sign everything and we picked up Claire (the one who’s ballot had already come, but she still needed to mail it). And we had run told Tal what we were doing so she went back to the print shop to print a ballot out. Finally, a whole group of us descended on the China Post office, asking for two envelopes, and shipping huge envelopes back to various parts of the US.
Printing out ballot: 11 kuai; Mailing ballot: 18 kuai, Voting in the 2008 election: priceless. And knowing that your story could be used in some “get out the vote” campaign- also priceless.


So to celebrate, we went to this Western bar/restaurant called the “Bad Monkey” and had absolutely delicious burgers. In China.