I’m back in Palo Alto after a nice surprise of being upgraded to business class on my flight home. Definitely the way to go on the long flights... too bad I have a negative cash flow and will probably have to wait quite a while before that happens again.
Anyway, so I’m at the car wash this afternoon, waiting outside (e.g. falling asleep outside) while the car wash people do there thing. It was probably about 50 degrees so I was thoroughly enjoying being back in Cali and was soaking in the sun in my T-shirt (ok I know this is abnormal but after below zero temperatures the last three weeks I think my Wisconsin blood came back). Anyway, I ran into my friend Paul. Now Paul is from LA, and just spent a week in Argentina. He sat down next to me wearing a full down jacket, a hat, and gloves. Not sure if he would have survived Harbin, even with the Russian hat.
Right now I’m trying to stay up as late as possible tonight - 9:00pm??? I'm also enjoying fresh air, blue skys, Sunday football, easy access to milk and cheese, and knowing that eating feet and internal organs isn't even an option for a while since I went grocery shopping at Safeway today.
Also, instead of organizing my life for the next quarter of school, I decided to upload pictures instead... this must be a record for me since I still haven’t uploaded the ones from my summer trip yet. Try not to mind our apperance too much... especially in Harbin. It was FREEZING!!! Also, I decided to save myself even further embarassment and did not upload the New Years Eve pics. Sorry!
Harbin http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=lisa.scheible&target=ALBUM&id=5287631409052388417&authkey=lf0JI8MU2Ws&feat=email
The Village by Harbin http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=lisa.scheible&target=ALBUM&id=5287632902806152321&authkey=xaVumJbSU3g&feat=email
Ice Cities http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=lisa.scheible&target=ALBUM&id=5287633332351441425&authkey=4BSN5UJUQKI&feat=email
Beijing & Great Wall http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=lisa.scheible&target=ALBUM&id=5287634101957709441&authkey=JQlmonUQb-E&feat=email
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Beijing in a day?
So yesterday, in a crazy time-warped world (since it’s really been about 48 hours), was my last full day in Beijing. As much as we needed sleep, Laura wanted to show me about 20 other things before I left so we got up early, met Chris and John, and crammed it all in. I skipped some of the must-sees (e.g. The Forbidden City) since I’m sure I will be going in September. We did hit up the Silk Market, another famous street full of shops and cafés, Tianamen Square, the new National Theater, and at night a couple of Laura’s favorite bars. We also somehow managed to cram in a visit to her grandparents and a final family dinner (meal number 5 of the day I think).
Deals of the day: We went to a tailor in the silk market who John has worked with before and brought one of Laura’s Thomas Pink shirts. In less than 24 hours I had three copies of the shirt made custom to my measurements and a suit for a grand total of less than $200. I seriously think they must just have a copy machine where they put a shirt in, some new fabric, and push a button. They also came to her place at 9:00pm (after dinner and before going out) to do a final sizing on the suit which they then delivered along with the shirts at 9:00am the next morning. Amazing. Slightly less amazing although perhaps equally fun was stocking up on DVDs for $1 each at 1:30 in the morning before stumbling home.
Deals of the day: We went to a tailor in the silk market who John has worked with before and brought one of Laura’s Thomas Pink shirts. In less than 24 hours I had three copies of the shirt made custom to my measurements and a suit for a grand total of less than $200. I seriously think they must just have a copy machine where they put a shirt in, some new fabric, and push a button. They also came to her place at 9:00pm (after dinner and before going out) to do a final sizing on the suit which they then delivered along with the shirts at 9:00am the next morning. Amazing. Slightly less amazing although perhaps equally fun was stocking up on DVDs for $1 each at 1:30 in the morning before stumbling home.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
The Great Scramble
Yesterday, Laura and I, along with her friends Chris and John, decided to go to the Great Wall. Since I’m coming back to China in September, and Laura and John live here (Chris is visiting), we thought it would be fun to go to one of the unrestored sections of the wall instead of the traditional touristy areas. Great idea, poor execution.
Poor execution example 1: No GPS in China. What should have been an hour and a half drive turned into almost three hours. Since it wasn’t a touristy area, our cab driver got incredibly lost. The Chinese, at least out in the villages, are also terrible at giving directions. We got no less than six different opinions. I don’t speak Chinese, but I think the conversations went something like this. Approach fork in the road and ask local if we take a right or a left. Response “well, the fishing village is Northwest, and you came from Beijing, so maybe turn around and backtrack.” Around 1:00, we finally made it.
Poor execution example 2: How much higher is it? The Great wall is built on a mountain. If you don’t go to a tourist region where you can drive half way up, cable car up, or walk up steps, you have to scale the mountain. Ok, not the worst thing, we all like hiking and were up for an adventure. We did, however, somehow manage to pick the highest peak that we could see for miles. Jeans, cashmere sweaters, and long down jackets / pea coats: not ideal clothing for what became a two-hour strenuous scramble up the mountain. A decent portion was open rock face and walking along narrow ledges; we were on all fours for about half the way up.
Poor execution example 3: Racing the setting sun. We had little time to celebrate our victory of making it to the Wall on top of the mountain. It was 3:00 by that point and we knew it would be pitch black by 5:00. Going down the way we came up didn’t seem to be an option – it was borderline too dangerous in daylight and we couldn’t risk getting stuck on the mountain at night. After weighing our options, we decided to try to walk along the wall several miles towards one of the tourist areas a few miles away… despite the fact that our ride home was waiting for us at the bottom of the mountain. Covering a couple miles in two hours doesn’t sound that bad, but the unrestored section of the wall was REALLY unrestored. We might as well have been back on the ledge on the mountain. Parts were steep enough that we actually had to “slide” down on our butts. We didn’t think we’d make it by dark, but we were hoping to minimally make it to a section of the wall that was safer to walk on figuring that if it came down to it, we could use light from our phones or absolutely worst case scenario wait the night out in one of the towers.
Luckily – we came to the restored section of the wall sooner than anticipated. (It should also probably be noted that to getting to this section involved jumping over a gate with a big sign on the other side that said “Danger: No Admittance”) In any case, the sun was just setting at 4:30 and we were able to haul ass to cover the last mile to a cable car just as darkness set in. The last part of the adventure was bribing one of the few locals still around to drive us the 10K back to where our cab was miraculously still waiting.
Finally some good decisions: Despite being completely exhausted and smelling of mountain and dirty cab, we decided to celebrate our victory (aka survival) by going to the nicest duck restaurant in Beijing. We followed dinner up with a full body massage and sleep-walked home at 12:30am.
Poor execution example 1: No GPS in China. What should have been an hour and a half drive turned into almost three hours. Since it wasn’t a touristy area, our cab driver got incredibly lost. The Chinese, at least out in the villages, are also terrible at giving directions. We got no less than six different opinions. I don’t speak Chinese, but I think the conversations went something like this. Approach fork in the road and ask local if we take a right or a left. Response “well, the fishing village is Northwest, and you came from Beijing, so maybe turn around and backtrack.” Around 1:00, we finally made it.
Poor execution example 2: How much higher is it? The Great wall is built on a mountain. If you don’t go to a tourist region where you can drive half way up, cable car up, or walk up steps, you have to scale the mountain. Ok, not the worst thing, we all like hiking and were up for an adventure. We did, however, somehow manage to pick the highest peak that we could see for miles. Jeans, cashmere sweaters, and long down jackets / pea coats: not ideal clothing for what became a two-hour strenuous scramble up the mountain. A decent portion was open rock face and walking along narrow ledges; we were on all fours for about half the way up.
Poor execution example 3: Racing the setting sun. We had little time to celebrate our victory of making it to the Wall on top of the mountain. It was 3:00 by that point and we knew it would be pitch black by 5:00. Going down the way we came up didn’t seem to be an option – it was borderline too dangerous in daylight and we couldn’t risk getting stuck on the mountain at night. After weighing our options, we decided to try to walk along the wall several miles towards one of the tourist areas a few miles away… despite the fact that our ride home was waiting for us at the bottom of the mountain. Covering a couple miles in two hours doesn’t sound that bad, but the unrestored section of the wall was REALLY unrestored. We might as well have been back on the ledge on the mountain. Parts were steep enough that we actually had to “slide” down on our butts. We didn’t think we’d make it by dark, but we were hoping to minimally make it to a section of the wall that was safer to walk on figuring that if it came down to it, we could use light from our phones or absolutely worst case scenario wait the night out in one of the towers.
Luckily – we came to the restored section of the wall sooner than anticipated. (It should also probably be noted that to getting to this section involved jumping over a gate with a big sign on the other side that said “Danger: No Admittance”) In any case, the sun was just setting at 4:30 and we were able to haul ass to cover the last mile to a cable car just as darkness set in. The last part of the adventure was bribing one of the few locals still around to drive us the 10K back to where our cab was miraculously still waiting.
Finally some good decisions: Despite being completely exhausted and smelling of mountain and dirty cab, we decided to celebrate our victory (aka survival) by going to the nicest duck restaurant in Beijing. We followed dinner up with a full body massage and sleep-walked home at 12:30am.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Family Time and Still More Food
In the states, I typically spend January 1st recovering, watching sports, and maybe making it out for a late brunch around 1:00 or 2:00. For some reason I thought we were planning to meet Laura’s family later in the afternoon. I was wrong – Laura woke up early and called around 10:00am and they were already wondering how soon we could come over for lunch. With everything I consumed less than 12 hours before still swimming around in my system, I’m still not quite sure how I made it through the day.
We went to her Great Aunt’s house around noon and were greeted by about 15 family members sitting around a table with the most food I’ve seen on this trip. Picture “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” the Chinese version. (Although, in the Chinese version if you’re a vegetarian they won’t offer to make you lamb, they’ll offer to make you pork.) Despite my stomachs rebellion, I found a way to eat more of the delicious home-cooked food. (The dumplings were amazing although I wasn’t up for more animal feet.) It was really fun to meet her family, including her grandparents who I have been hearing so much about for the last couple of years.
After lunch, Laura’s aunt and cousin were awesome and offered to drive us to some of the tourist sites farther outside of town. We drove by the Olympic Green and saw all of the Olympic buildings. (China by the way is still OBSESSED with the Olympics. It plays on continuous loops here. E.g. after lunch everyone retired to the couch to watch the men’s ping pong finals, China vs. China.) After that we trekked out to the Summer Palace of the former Empress Cixi. Click here for Wiki pictures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Palace We had a perfect day and a lot of fun wandering around, I was actually starting to feel like a human by the end.
After the palace we had to go back to say bye to the family and we were, of course, just in time for dinner… which consisted of an even bigger spread than lunch. I really don’t know how everyone stays so thin!!! Once we were all stuffed to the point of not being able to move, one of Laura’s aunt suggested we all play a game to finish more of the food on the table. For those of you who have played speed quarters with two glasses… you know how you have to drink when the glasses meet up with each other??? Well, we had to play speed “rock, paper, scissors” for chopsticks – if you ended up with two chopsticks you lost and had to eat more food. It definitely made for quite the post-dinner entertainment. At long last, we made it back home where I refused to do anything else that required moving… including typing the blog. We watched a movie and went to bed.
We went to her Great Aunt’s house around noon and were greeted by about 15 family members sitting around a table with the most food I’ve seen on this trip. Picture “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” the Chinese version. (Although, in the Chinese version if you’re a vegetarian they won’t offer to make you lamb, they’ll offer to make you pork.) Despite my stomachs rebellion, I found a way to eat more of the delicious home-cooked food. (The dumplings were amazing although I wasn’t up for more animal feet.) It was really fun to meet her family, including her grandparents who I have been hearing so much about for the last couple of years.
After lunch, Laura’s aunt and cousin were awesome and offered to drive us to some of the tourist sites farther outside of town. We drove by the Olympic Green and saw all of the Olympic buildings. (China by the way is still OBSESSED with the Olympics. It plays on continuous loops here. E.g. after lunch everyone retired to the couch to watch the men’s ping pong finals, China vs. China.) After that we trekked out to the Summer Palace of the former Empress Cixi. Click here for Wiki pictures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Palace We had a perfect day and a lot of fun wandering around, I was actually starting to feel like a human by the end.
After the palace we had to go back to say bye to the family and we were, of course, just in time for dinner… which consisted of an even bigger spread than lunch. I really don’t know how everyone stays so thin!!! Once we were all stuffed to the point of not being able to move, one of Laura’s aunt suggested we all play a game to finish more of the food on the table. For those of you who have played speed quarters with two glasses… you know how you have to drink when the glasses meet up with each other??? Well, we had to play speed “rock, paper, scissors” for chopsticks – if you ended up with two chopsticks you lost and had to eat more food. It definitely made for quite the post-dinner entertainment. At long last, we made it back home where I refused to do anything else that required moving… including typing the blog. We watched a movie and went to bed.
NY Style New Years... Sort of
Since the Chinese have their New Year celebration later this month, New Years Eve as we know it is pretty much an expat holiday in Beijing. That being said, our night was pretty similar to what you’d expect in a big city in the states. We had dinner for 25 (most of Laura’s friends) at an all you can eat and drink restaurant and then we reserved three tables at one of the more popular clubs, that for the most part played American hip-hop music. Despite the similarity of the general itinerary, there were a few notable differences:
• Dinner started at 6:30. Seriously????
• In addition to the standard sushi and surf and turf cuisine, we also sampled things such as spicy frog legs, bull penis, and some type of animal stomach
• The VIP section was actually within budget
• There was a disproportionate amount of Asians at the club, and I was one of two blonds at the entire place
Other than the fact that I had trouble breathing in the smoke – and am still suffering from it a couple days later, it was a fun night. The after party was at a fancy W-like hotel downtown overlooking the Forbidden City. The plan was to stay up and watch the sunrise over the Forbidden City, but seeing as how we started with “all you can drink” at 6:30 I think we only made it until 3:30 before cabbing back to Laura’s, making more food (although I have no clue how we managed to fit it in our stomachs) and then passing out.
• Dinner started at 6:30. Seriously????
• In addition to the standard sushi and surf and turf cuisine, we also sampled things such as spicy frog legs, bull penis, and some type of animal stomach
• The VIP section was actually within budget
• There was a disproportionate amount of Asians at the club, and I was one of two blonds at the entire place
Other than the fact that I had trouble breathing in the smoke – and am still suffering from it a couple days later, it was a fun night. The after party was at a fancy W-like hotel downtown overlooking the Forbidden City. The plan was to stay up and watch the sunrise over the Forbidden City, but seeing as how we started with “all you can drink” at 6:30 I think we only made it until 3:30 before cabbing back to Laura’s, making more food (although I have no clue how we managed to fit it in our stomachs) and then passing out.
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