Journal: Beijing, Xi'an, Suzhou, Shanghai

[Laura]

I've been back from China for over a week and now am finally getting around to posting my journal. Part of the reason for the delay is my feelings toward my experience there. To put it bluntly, China was difficult for me. I had an image in my mind, and what I saw didn't quite measure up. I was also travelling alone. Well, with a tour group, but I didn't know anyone before I met up with the group, so I was homesick for part of the trip.

I'm glad I went, and I really want to go back to sample other parts of this interesting and complex country.

SUNDAY, MAY 30/MONDAY, MAY 31 2004

I am so excited about going to China at last that I can hardly stand it. I've been stressing out all day about packing, getting all the maps and things I need, and so on. It will be a relief to finally get on the plane and relax.

Asiana told me to be at the airport at 10pm, three hours before departure. I got there shortly after 10 and was probably one of the first few checking in because there was only on person in front of me. Security was empty, too. Now I'm sitting in United's lounge, sipping a cocktail and anticipating the adventures to come.

When I was a kid, Christmas was so magical and I'd get so excited that invariably I'd come down with a fever. After I grew up I wondered if I'd ever be that excited about any event againl. Well, I am. I have to keep telling myself to be calm and take cooling breaths.

I'm not sure when my fascination with China began. When I was about eight President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger went to China. I remember seeing the Great Wall and the Beijing Acrobats on TV. In college I started eating Chinese food, including roast duck for the first time. I was always drawn to Chinese characters (writing). Last year in Tokyo , it all came together and I decided to learn to read and write Chinese and to learn to speak Mandarin.

I should practice! (The following was originally written in Chinese characters):

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May 31, Monday:

Today I am going to Beijing. Seeing Bejing makes me very happy.

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Well, that's all I can put together now. I should have kept studying my characters even after the exam earlier this week.

[Laura]

TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 2004

Flying. Asiana is pleasant, the trip to Seoul/Incheon doesn't seem to last that long even though it is scheduled at 11 hours and 40 minutes. We flew by Japan's Mt. Fuji, but it was pitch black out so I couldn't see it. Landing at Incheon at dawn was magical: sun rising over misty hills, islets off the coast. It looked very "Wizard of Earth Sea." I wish I had taken pictures.

I made my connection, arrived in Beijing, and was met by a driver for my tour group. I actually attempted speaking a mixture of Mandarin and English, and it all worked out well although we rapidly ran out of subjects that we both knew enough words to talk about.

My hotel, the Beijing Harmony Hotel, is very Motel 6 with exceptionally firm beds. The location is *excellent*, but now I have to get up enough nerve to leave the room! I've been procrastinating for two hours now and time is a-wasting....

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I left the hotel and walked to what looked like the nearest Metro stop for line 5 with the intention of visiting the Temple of Heaven, only to find that I mis-read my map and line 5 doesn't exist yet! So, instead I headed to the Llamist (Tibetan) Budddhist Temple. It was easy to find my way on the subway, and tickets cost about US $0.25 each. It seemed clean and not very chaotic, but it was a holiday -- International Children's Day.

The Temple itself was a peaceful oasis, and a riot of color. Young monks swept, dusted, and cleaned windows. A cute one even smiled at me and said "Ni hao" (Hello). It was very hot and I was very tired. Women walked around the stone pavement in high heels -- I see women in heels everywhere!

I then tried to go to the nearby Confucian Temple & College, but I was too late and arrived just as they closed the ticket office. So, I went back to my hotel and was just getting ready to take a shower when my tour guide arrived. He was very nice and gave me his card and also some maps. I went to bed around 8pm local time -- and woke up at 7am the next morning!

[Laura]

(In Chinese):

JUNE 2, WEDNESDAY

Today is also very hot.

(continuing in English):

Oh well, I can't recall the characters. I am completely illterate here. There's enough English so that tourists can get aroundm, but I know so little Chinese!

I left the hotel just after breakfast to walk around the Temple of Heaven (Tiantan). It took me about 45 minutes to walk from my hotel to the park. Everybody says Beijing is dirty and polluted, but I don't see it (yet). It certainly doesn't smell as bad as New York City. The only thing that has weirded me out so far is all the spitting! There's a LOT of loogie-hocking.

The Temple of Heaven Park is huge, and nicely full of people. The first thing I visited was a toilet. I only mention it because it was rated with four-stars by the Chinese government. Other things seen:

* multiple groups of partner dancers. Some are doing a sort of Nightclub 2-step, others are doing a sort of Lindy Hop. Both groups dance to Chinese music.

* groups of line dancers. It looked like high-speed Tai Chi to me, set to music.

* a group of "disco" dancers off on their own in the Cypress Forest, again dancing to Chinese music.

* pairs of people playing badminton, but not on a court, just in the park.

* groups singing traditional Chinese songs with flut accompanyment.

* several pairs of Euro-descended women with a Chinese daughter -- the mother was probably showing her adopted child her land of birth.

After the park, which was beautiful but needs pictures to demonstrate the wonderfulness of the architecture and the majesty of the building decorations, I stopped by the Hong Qiao Market. I really hate bargaining, but I did it anyway. I bought two scrolls, one with ai (love) and one with xi xixi (double happiness), each for 35 yuan ($4.25). I also got two packs of colored ink sticks each for 50 yuan ($6.25), which I later found out was a complete rip-off and that I should have paid about 1/3rd of the price. I bought a nice silk handbag for 22 yuan ($2.75), which is already starting to fall apart but I really needed it for going out -- I don't want to haul my backpack to a bar! The best find in the market was the DLCR5 batteries for my digital camera. In the US they are about $15.00 each, and I paid $9.00 for them in Cambodia. Here, they were 45 yuan ($5.60) each. I should have bought a pile of them!!

That evening I went to an ex-patriot cocktail party at the Kerry Center Hotel's "Centro" bar. I got lost on the way, but asked for directions "Qing wen, Kerry Center zai nar?" Through the magic of sign language and kowing the words for left and right, I managed to get there. The bar was very nice; I had a "tasting" of five rum cocktails for 100 yuan (about $12), including hot hors' d'oveurs. The scene was quite the "old boy network," no one talked to me until this incredibly cute Canadian guy showed up. He's worked in a bunch of hot spots including Kabul and Baghdad, and is now in Beijing setting up a new branch of his "relocation" company, which is based in Hungary. We talked politics and about the World situation for about two hours, and then I took a taxi back to my hotel. [/list][/list]

[Laura]

JUNE 3, THURSDAY

Woke up with a bit of a hangover After eating breakfast at the hotel's buffet (20 yuan/$2.50) I took the subway to the Back Lakes area and spent all day walking around the hutongs. "Hutong" sort of means "lane," and the hutongs are the ancient neighborhoods of Beijing, made up of tiny twisting streets with grey brick houses built around courtyards. I know the various tour books are lamenting their disappearance -- they're being torn down right and left to modernize in the face of the upcoming Olympics -- but I must say that the hutongs are kind of slummy for the most part so if they're not going to be restored or improved then why not tear them down? Modernization is tough: some of the hutong residents aren't sorry about being relocated to modern apartment buildings because the hutongs don't have plumbing. Yet also it's desirable to preserve the characteristic flavor of an area. Some of the hutong areas don't seem to have toilets or safe water, or even running water. I passed a woman pulling a cart full of what looked like Perrier bottles, calling "shui! shui!" ("water! water!"). I saw public toilets everywhere and then realized they are probably the normal toilets for the hutong residents. Not that lack of running water is an unsurmountable problem, of course, but there are other problems too like some areas falling into disrepair, and piles of garbage and junk behind the houses.

My long walk took me to a lot of great sights:

* the arrow tower -- once part of the old Beijing city walls, very huge and high!

* art museum dedicated to Xu Beihong, a famous brush painting artist. His watercolors are widely copied, I believe he's most famous for pictures of horses, and of tigers. A museum guard brings me a book with descriptions of the works in both English and Chinese. He followed me around with the book, turning to the appropriate page of whatever I was looking at. I think he was worried about me because the first thing that happened when I entered the museum was that I got a spontaneous bloody nose and I sat around for a while with my nose stuffed with tissue trying to get it to stop.

* former residence of Mrs. Sun Yat Sen, which is possibly the house where Henry Pu Yu (the last Emperor) was born. This is a gorgeous complex with extensive gardens. The interiors are filled with personal items that had belong to the Sun's.

* drum tower & bell tower. These towers used to mark time for the city. The drums would beat for the daytime hours, the bells would ring for the night time hours. Or maybe I have it backwards. Anyway they were massive towers, not unlike the arrow tower that guarded the main wall.

* saw lots of men fishing from the shores of the lakes

* Prince Gong's Mansion, one of the finest of the old houses in the Back Lakes area. It's another gorgeous complex of pavillons and buildings, connected through the extensive gardens with covered walkways. Rather than being what Westerners think of as a house, it's more a complex of smaller one-storey buildings that have a few rooms in them. A dining room might be one small building, a study another, someone's private rooms a somewhat bigger building with a few adjoining rooms. The buildings and the gardens wind around each other so that parts of the garden seem to be rooms themselves.

In the more popular tourist areas I kept getting approached by rickshaw drivers wanting me to take a tour. One even showed me his picture from the New York Times. He followed me for about four blocks, and I finally got rid of him by saying "Wo hen pang, wo yao zou!" (I'm very fat, I want to walk!) I walked about nine hours that day! Well, I took some rests, but still....

On the way back to the hotel I stopped at a supermarket and bought a picnic lunch for tomorrow's trip to the Great Wall. I also picked up two kid's books written in simplified Chinese characters with pinyin "subtitles." Pinyin is the romanization of Chinese, so these books will help me learn new characters.

That evening I finally met up with my tour group. It was a good young bunch: 6 Australians, 2 girls from Northern Ireland, and a family of 3 from Finland. We ate a large Chinese meal together, including somewhat disappointing roast duck (not crispy enough) and the best Kung Pao chicken that I've ever tasted.

[Laura]

JUNE 4, FRIDAY

I'm writing this as the group is heading out to the Great Wall at Mutianyu, about 1 1/2 hours from Beijing. This is just my American preconceptions talking here, but I don't see how China can expect to become a great world power again without a decent freeway system around the major cities. Thailand seemed better; well, less traffic at least. China does have a lot of trains, though, so I'll see that tomorrow. When I was in Thailand I also noticed an absence of "beater" cars like you see in the US. The same phenomenon is in effect here, too -- all the cars are in good shape and look fairly new. And maybe people just take better care of their cars because they don't take them for granted like we do in the US.

The Great Wall itself is spectacular. The mountains rise out of the plains suddenly, and there's quite a distance from the "base camp" to where the wall itself actually sits on a high ridge. Jill, one of the Australian women, and I took an aerial tram up while the rest of the group hiked. It took her fit hubby about 45 minutes to climb, and the rest of our group took about an hour. At the top, dozens of teenagers in ethnic dress were hanging out, they were fliming a music video for the Olympics. We all hiked along the top of the wall for about an hour to an even higher peak, and then back. Everyone's legs felt like jelly, especially since part of the hike was a long stairway that looked like it was steeper than 45 degrees So, we all took the tram back down.

At the bottom we had to run an obnoxious gauntlet of souvenier sellers. I didn't buy anything just because they were so forward and forceful, they'd come and block your path or grab you to make you look at their wares. We found a quiet cafe, and I ate a great bowl of noodles. Then we headed back to Beijing. I must admit I'm feeling homesick and lonely.

That evening I met my friend Danese at the Grand Hyatt. She was in town on business, and she invited me over to swim in the Hyatt's pool. It was the most amazing indoor pool I've ever seen. The ceiling was arched, and the whole place was lit like it was just after sunset and the stars were coming out. There were even little stars in the ceiling. The pool area was surrounded by rock formations and leafy tropical jungle plants, with hot tubs on the side and a teak Thai pavillion at one end. After that we went for roast duck at Xiao Wang Jia, somewhere out in the houtongs. It was delicious -- the thing with good Peking Duck is that it's so rich that you fill up fast, but it's so tasty that you can't stop eating it!

The Grand Hyatt was wonderful and I wished I could stay there forever with Danese, but I took a cab back to the hotel. I like Beijing cabs, the drivers seem so honest and efficient, and the fares are so reasonable. The most expensive cab ride I took was 15 yuan ($2.00).

[Laura]

JUNE 5, SATURDAY

This morning we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Tian An Men translates to "Heaven Peace Gate", as in "Gate of Heavenly Peace." It is the "front" entrance to the Forbidden City. So, Tiananmen Square is the huge square -- the largest public square in the world, whatever that means -- in front of Tiananmen. Yes, the Square is huge, and full of annoying souvenier sellers and hundreds of people who queue for two hours or more to see Chairman Mao's body. I remark to the group that Mao's name character translates to "fuzzy" in English. Yesterday was the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square student demonstrations, but absolutely nothing is going on here. It's as if the entire country has forgotten about it. Green is not our tour guide today, but rather a local guide from CITS (China International Tourist Service), the Official Government tourist agency. Someone asks about the anniversary and he basically blows us all off with a statement about how the international media says that a number of students died, but that no one is really sure what happened that day, and that he wasn't going to talk about it any more. Finally, my first definitive sign that I'm travelling in a Communist country. To lighten the mood, our guide tells us that the people waiting to see Mao's body often buy flowers to leave around his casket, and that the mausoleum groundskeepers actually take the flowers off his crypt and re-sell them several times a day. It makes a lot of sense, actually, because otherwise the largest public square in the world would turn into the largest heap of rotting flowers in the world. Mao is held in very high esteem, and if you look at it from the Chinese point of view it makes a lot of sense. The Chinese had been suffering under the Imperial Feudal system for thousands of years, and toward the end of that time were taken over by alien invaders when the Manchurians crossed the Great Wall and established the Qing Dynasty. Revolution and then Communism and then Mao's Cultural Revolution brought them forward hundreds of years in just a few decades. But I'll stop before I go off on a tangient and accidentally write a dissertation on Chinese politics and culture.

We approach the Forbidden City, and a huge forbidding red wall with a Ming-style gate: Tiananmen. Thousands of people stream in. The whole complex is in decay, with chipping and peeling paint everywhere. It is being restored but I don't see how the ornate ceiling and eaves work can ever be properly maintained, it is so intricate.

After passing through Tiananmen we enter yet another huge square with another forbidding red wall and another gate, this one Wumen ("Noon Gate", commonly called "The Meridian Gate"). The effect is rather like a series of Chinese boxes, you enter a huge square and see a big gate, you pass through the gate and enter a huge square and see a big gate, you pass through the gate and enter...."

Scenes from "The Last Emperor" keep flowing through my mind. here is the throne...here is where the palace eunuchs and guards kowtowed...here is where Henry Pu Yi played tennis. It goes on and on. We wander the side courtyards where the concubines lived, and end up in a gorgeous garden. The experience is rather spolied by endless souvenier shops and refreshment stands. I pass an open Starbucks and a Chinese woman wearing a Starbucks t-shirt comes up to me and asks me if I'm an American and if I want coffee. I tell her I can get Starbucks coffe at home any time I want and I came to China to see something different, and I keep walking.

The group breaks up for the day and I decide to work my way back to Tiananmen through the Forbidden City's west side, where I find palaces of the empress Cixi, and also of the Last Emperor's "First Other Wife" (concubine). The small palaces are decorated with Ming furnishings and artifacts. Revolutions are weird: it was so necessary to break the yoke of feudalism yet so much was lost in the process.

I head back to my hotel and preapre for my next adventure: the Chinese long-distance train.

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The train station, Beijing Xi Zhan (Bejing West Station), is crowded. It takes a while to find out waiting area, and EVERYONE is staring at us. There aren't any other Euro-people around that we can see, and here we are a whole dozen of them. Diana, Linda and I try to find an Internet Cafe. Through the power of my character writing skills I ask the information girls where the Wang Ba (Net Bar) is. We go up there and the attendants are most unhelpful. We want to buy 15 minutes of time, when we ask one attendant how much he says 20 yuan, but the woman sitting next to him says 5 yuan. The price on the board seems to be 20 yuan per hour, but I'm not really sure what the characters are. I pull out a five and the first attendant says 20 but when I pull out a 20 the other says 5. We give up in frustration when both attendants start ignoring us. It is so hard to deal with foreigners when you don't speak the language -- no matter if you are the local talking to some crazy euro-descended chicks, or vice versa. I totally understand it, but they weren't very creative about trying to be helpful.

We get on the train and I find it to be much more pleasant than I expected. Diana, Linda, Green (our tour guide), and I share a 4-bunk compartment, 2 above and 2 below. We all start drinking early -- lots of beer and some weird rice wine provided by Green that smells vaguely of bananas and feet. We all get ripped, and I eventually visit the onboard squat toilet that empties directly onto the tracks. The less said about that the better, but it did sort of traumatize Linda.

One Chinese guy sits outside our cabin (there aren't any doors), drinking beers and watching us intently. After a long time he is drunk enough to start speaking English to us, and I attempt to converse in my very bad Chinese. I tell him his English is much better than my Chinese.

At 10pm the lights go out and I climb to my bunk to sleep, vowing I will not use the bathroom again.

[Laura]

JUNE 6, SUNDAY

We arrived in Xi'an at 6:15 am and it's the most crazy chaotic place I've ever seen. The train station is packed and as we emerge we hear the Muslim morning calls to prayer. People crowd around us wanting to carry our luggage, and we're warned of some scam where old ladies want to buy your used train ticket which is then used to forge new ones which are then sold to unsuspecting (or rather, clueless) travelers. My head is swimming from the after-effects of the beer and the residual motion of the train. I drink a bottle of green tea and feel like I'm going to vomit. I randomly wonder if I've wasted a year learning Chinese.

We check into the hotel, I have a shower, and then go find a really cheap internet bar where the attendant is smiling and friendly. After checking mail I take a nap, and then Linda, Diana and I decide to walk to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. I think it takes us nearly two hours to get there (our map was misleading), but I get a good response asking directions along the way. I feel emboldened when it comes to speaking Chinese.

Xi'an is hot but dry, so it's pleasant under the trees when the breeze is blowing. We arrive at a plaza behind the Pagoda to see fountains doing a choreographed water dance, like at the Placa Espana in Barcelona. The gardens of the pagoda are cool and lovely, and middle-school students keep coming up to us to practice their English. I practice my Chinese in return, and fun is had by all.

We leave the temple grounds after about an hour and try to find a taxi to take us back to the hotel. We have no luck, and I wasn't really sure why. We think one guy is waiting for the people he brought out there, and another seems to be willing to take us for 20 yuan if we do it "off the meter." I'm not playing that game so we head to the street. We see Chinese people hail taxis but no one will stop for us. Linda, who is a cab driver in her home town, sees a cab stand and we head for it but once again can't find anyone who even seems remotely interested in taking us back to our hotel. I'm getting very frustrated and am wondering if we're going to have to walk back when an American guy who lives in Xi'an happens along and helps us sort things out. Praise Guan Yin, the goddess of mercy, whose statue I'd seen at the temple. The guy's girlfriend postulates that since it's 5pm and the driver's shifts are turning over things are even more chaotic than usual. The taxi driver we end up with -- the 5th we've tried, not counting trying to hail a cab -- seems very nice and professional and he drives us back to the hotel on the meter, and the whole thing comes to 12 yuan. Good thing I didn't go with that first rip-off artist who wanted 20 yuan off the meter. Even though I had no problems with cabs in Beijing, I'm starting to really hate cab drivers and decide my new goal is to get good enough at Chinese to deal with them in the future.

The whole group of us walks over to the Muslim Quarter for an incredible spicy hot pot meal. We stuff ourselves for 20 yuan each, including beer. Then some of us sit in a local beer garden, where we meet Green's incredibly cute but quite shy law-school student girlfriend. She speaks great English but we're all drunk except her so it's a little awkward. She comments that I'm the easiest person in the group for her to understand, even though I talk very fast, because I have an American accent and all her English teachers are American.

Tomorrow morning we will go see the Terracotta Warriors, and then take the evening overnight train to Suzhou.

[Laura]

JUNE 7, MONDAY

Today the sky is a kind of high light overcast. We head out to the Terracotta Warriors via a pottery factory that makes various reproductions of ceramics, bronzes, inlaid furniture and silk rugs. Everything in it is amazing but I can't buy it all. The factory guide tells us that they can't really fire clay in their factory any more because of air pollution. I wonder how much of the overcast is due to smog.

We leave and continue driving to the Terracotta Warriors site, passing fields of wheat and corn, and rows of peach, white jasine, and pomegranate trees. It is harvest time for the wheat, and one lane of the freeway plus exit ramps and village roads are covered with grain. They are using the roads as a threshing floor. It seems that the bulk of the work is done by hand, I only see one tractor-like machine in all the acres and acres of fields. I don't see any beasts of burden. I guess peasant life hasn't changed much here in thousands of years.

In the distance I see hills terraced for tea cultivation.

We arrive at the warrior site and see a huge market of fruit sellers and souvenier hawkers. We run this gauntlet and head to the visitor's center. First we see a "Circle Vision 360" movie about the end of the war that was prefaced in the movie "Hero," where the first Emperor unified China and set up the Qin Dynasty, proclaiming himself Emperor at the young age of 39. He also standardized the writing system, all about 200 years BC. The Chinese Empire might not have existed if not for him.

The old farmer who first stumbled across the warriors while digging a well has been made an honorary director of the museum, and for 20 yuan he will sign autographs -- no photos, please.

From there we finally progress to the main event -- "Pit One," where the soliders themselves are arrayed. Only about half of it is even excavated. The pit and the hall roof covering it is as big as an indoor soccer arena. There are two smaller, deeper pits, with terracotta officers and horses. Our guide tells us tha the Emperor was paranoid and had some system where his General (apparantly he didn't have many) couldn't control the army unless he held two halves of a tiger figurine. The General kept 1/2 with him, and the Emperor the other. When the Emperor would give orders, he would send along his tiger half. The archeologists have found one half but not the other.

After the pits came a small museum hosting some amazing half-scale bronze chariots. The war chariots from "Hero" certainly appear to be based on these.

When all is done we run the souvenier gauntlet again and are treated to fresh apricots and white peaches on the bus. They are ripe and juicy but not as sweet as the US versions, which I've read are bred for super-sweetness.

Oh, I forgot to mention Chinese traffic. Aside from being crazy, it's downright insane. The worst thing we've seen so far is a woman backing up on the freeway because she missed her exit. This beats the left turn on red across three lanes of traffic that I had previously witnessed in Beijing.

We went back to the hotel and had an "Imperial Dumpling Lunch." It was good, lots of variety (even peacock meat), and less dough than the gyoza at home.

From there I browsed the "underground market" at the Bell & Drum Tower square, and realized that it was basically the Short Hills Mall. (The Short Hills Mall is an extremely chichi shopping mall with Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Fendi, Chanel, etc etc in a very wealthy suburb of New York City). Apparantly there are some very rich people in Xi'an.

Then it's time to board the overnight train for the 16+ hour trip to Suzhou. This train has triple-decker bunks, and an "in flight" video system that showed a mixture of classical and pop Chinese music videos plus tv shorts and even a Chinese comedian. I got to practice my awful Chinese with the beer vendor guy, we bought so much I thnk we were his favorite customers.

Time passed, and around sunset the trained climbed some mountains and passed picturesque fields and villages. This part of the trip is definitely prettier than what we saw around Beijing.

Tonight is Steve's (one of the Australian guys) birthday, so we had a little party. I still don't quite understand how Jill and Green managed to get a whole cake on board without any of us noticing it.

The lights when out at 10pm again, so I climbed up to my bunk and went to sleep.

[Laura]

JUNE 8, TUESDAY

We arrived in Suzhou around 10:30am. After getting settled I went to the bank to change money and was cut in front of by an old laborer. The teller helped him first (something that involved a lot of rubber stamping of forms). When he was done she took care of me, but the guy remained standing there like six inches from me, staring. There is a lot of cutting in line here and it annoys me because I thought there was a positive stereotype of Chinese people being polite. Well, here it is, culture shock at work again. There is a great concern with saving face, it doesn't seem to extend to physical politeness: I've had market hawkers grab me, push in front of me to block my way. I've had people push and shove me to get through a turnstyle one step in front of me, and then there's the thing with the guy at the bank. To me it seems really rude, but it's a different society so maybe I just need to get pushy in return? Or maybe it doesn't matter what I do because I am so obviously a foreigner?

The group had a good Chinese lunch and then I decided to walk to a nearby garden. Suzhou is famous for its gardens, and I headed to the "Surging Waves Pavillion."

On the way over I got lost and an old man who spoke about as much English as I do Chinese helped me by leading me to my destination! I thanked him for being so kind and he smiled and said "no matter." I like China a lot more outside of crowds and Beijing.

The Surging Waves Pavillion is small, but you can't tell because the garden paths wind around and in on themselves through various pavillions decorated with Ming/Qing era furniture and large calligraphy scrolls. Many older Chinese roam the grounds, and they seem quite nice. I sat in the garden's central pavillion writing for about an hour, and a small group can and sat with me and chatted. They tried to talk to me but I'm very tired and couldn't focus so my Chinese was even worse than usual and so they left me alone to write. Using a foreign language is so difficult at the beginning...but it was nice to listen to them talk. I wonder if they were speaking the local dialect?

I'm feeling quite homesick and wish my husband Brian would call. He's in Seoul (later on I find out that his phone didn't work there, which is why he never called). I hope I can find him in Shanghai tomorrow!

This evening the group went to the "Master of the Nets" garden to see a cultural show. There were different performances of traditional Chinese music in each pavillion in the garden, and also some dancing and singing, all in the old Suzhou style using the Suzhou dialect. The best part was sitting in the gardens listening to the flute, recorder, and other traditional music. I enjoyed it all so much that I bought a CD.

After that the group went looking for cheep bear. We tried an "Aussie Bar" but it wasn't any more Australian than Benngian's is Irish. As the Aussies in our group said "Foster's on tap does not an Aussie bar make!" We ended up going back to the place where we had lunch and having a beer there. Green (our tour guide) told us the story of how he had to practically bribe his local officials to get the licenses for his guesthouse in Yangshou. It started out with him going to the offices, filling out the papers, and then being told they had no time to send an inspector over in the forseeable future. He tried again later, and got the same answer. A friend of his told him he wa going about it all wrong, and that he had to build a relationship with the officials so that they would process his forms. It took gives of cigarettes and rice wine and dinner to get them to find the time to "inspect" his place -- and they actually never ended up going over there in person anyway.

I haven't seen a newspaper or any English TV other than CCTV (China Central Television) 9 in a week and a half. It's funny, but unless I think about it I don't really feel disconnected from the rest of the world (well, except for my husband Brian). Tomorrow I will see him in Shanghai, though.

[Laura]

JUNE 9, WEDNESDAY

Today we took the commuter train from Suzhou to Shanghai. It was exactly what you would expect from a commuter train in the US or Europe; the trip took about an hour and a half and passed through farmland and then a more industrial area with some factories in the distance.

When I got to Shanghai I called Brian and decided I'd drop my bags at his hotel and then meet him and his business associates at an upscale shopping area called Xintiandi (New Heaven and Earth). But when I got there, I couldn't find him, and for some reason his phone was giving one of those "out of range" messages. I tried calling one of the guys he was with, and had the same problem -- or so I thought. It turns out that I was trying to call a friend in California with the same name as the person in Shanghai! I stood around for 20 minutes completely panicked because I was so tired and so looking forward to seeing Brian. I eventually send him a text message which happened to get through, and he came and found me. I was so happy to see him I burst into tears.

Xintiandi was built to evoke the old Shanghai-style shop house architecture. It's a shopping street with bars, restaurants, and nice stores selling tea, housewares, and clothes. There's also pushcarts with vendors selling souveniers. It's nice, but it's a lot like things I've seen in the US. Brian asks his associate what the Chinese think of the place, and we hear that they love it because it's clean and has modern services yet uses the old-style architecture. As for myself, I wonder...the goods there are pricey, even by my American standards. Still, the bar is pleasant, I sit outside and drink a frosty cold beer. I haven't had a cold beer in ages, all the beer on the train was room temperature. When it's hot, a cold beer just tastes right.

The group of us (Brian and his business associates, one of the guy's wives, and myself) go to a neighborhood hot pot restaurant. The place is bustling, and the food smells wonderful. At the table next to us a group of people are drinking heavily while watching the China versus Malaysia soccer game on TV. It's a World Cup qualifying match, and China is winning. Two guys from the next table wander by ours to toast with us, we drink glasses of beer while shouting "gang bei" (basically "bottom's up!) to each other. This continues on throughout dinner, and by the end of the night one of the wives from the other table is apologizing to us for her husband and friends being so lound and drunk. We keep telling them it's okay, because the whole thing was very friendly and amusing. The food itself was good -- but to tell you the truth the hot pot I had in the Muslim Quarter in Xi'an was better.

Brian is sort of sick (he reports he drank waaaay too much at a businessman's dinner in Seoul the night before and is still feeling it) and I'm tired, so we wander back to the hotel and crash.

[steve_irwin]

China is a pretty varied country, you can step from a bustling metropolis into a suddenly quiet country farm in a few minutes.

With the politeness thing, its just the environment. You probably experienced ruder behaviour in big cities, happens all over the world - city people from New York, Shanghai, Paris are usually ruder than country farmers. Its apparently some kind of psychological condition caused by crowding.

Xi'an is a great place to visit. It used to be the capital of China during the Tang dynasty ("Changan" was the original name), and during that time it was one of the most multicultural and modern cities in the world. Its probably where the idea of China not being of race, but culture, comes from.
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"Crikey!"

[Laura]