It's one month into my third year in a city I thought I'd live in for no more than two years, tops. We just received a new schedule for the rest of the term but otherwise I find I'm feeling pretty settled in. A lot has happened in the past month as things get sorted out and people meet and catch up. Every year, I promise myself I'll go out more and so far I seem to be doing good on that. I have no intention of becoming a boozier person, that takes even more recovery time than just hanging out with groups of people for one night but I do want to make sure I'm spending more time with other human beings. I'm not great with people, but I'll keep trying.

I finally made my way to Yanling with a group of other foreign teachers who teach in Zhuzhou. Every year, the city puts on a few events where foreign teachers go to teach at a school where students do not have a foreign teacher leading an oral English class for a day. This year was the first time they did an overnight trip. We went sightseeing for half a day in Yanling and taught classes the next morning after the opening ceremony and requisite speeches and photos. I was excited to see Emperor Yan's mausoleum, though being the important figure he is I doubt that this is the only place with claims to him.

Buddhas big, Buddhas small, Buddhas big and Buddhas tall, you want Buddhas we've got them all
at the Longmen caves!


Although the Longmen caves were not my only stop during my week in Henan province, this thought has certainly crossed my mind in view of many places I visited there. The Longmen caves (of which you can see a small section above), Shaolin temple, Zhongyue temple, Kaifeng with its silk road and imperial history...well, maybe not Nanjiecun where I started my week in Henan. Said to be the last Maoist collective in China the images decorating the streets and the parks are those celebrating the working man, Mao, Marx, Engels, Stalin, and Lenin. It was very quiet and clean. And very empty when I wandered through. There's a guided tour but it's all in Chinese and I don't think my Chinese is good enough to justify an 80 yuan tour I can't completely understand. After nearly 2 hours I made my way to the bus station to get to Zhengzhou.

​Henan was relatively easy to get around by bus so that's largely how I got around with the exception of getting lost on the edge of Zhengzhou after (I think) I got on a bus from Nanjiecun going in the right direction but at the wrong time so it didn't go to the city center. After one anxiety-ridden black cab ride I didn't really want to take but kind of got hustled into while trying to find my way to the main bus station, some misunderstandings and crying, I arrived in Kaifeng 500 yuan lighter than I had planned for. I still hate myself for that. There was one point in the trip where we had to stop for gas and he said "Ni jia you wo" (Roughly, "You add gas for me") and I got ticked off because I thought he was demanding I get out and gas his car for him after I already gave him hundreds. I told I him "I already gave you money" and then he made the comment repeatedly that "Ni gei wo qian. yi bai..." and I started to get really angry and anxious. I didn't hear him add a "le" that would have told me he was saying I gave him money and that he used 100 to gas up, so I thought he was speaking in the present tense. I got pretty pissed off that this guy would just keep asking me for money after asking me for so much when I was stuck and I screamed in English "Fine! I'll go!" and began plotting when the best time to open the door and run out would be. Then I screamed "Wo gei le si bai!" (I gave you 400!) and started crying instead. Then he sounded upset as he said "Ni bu dong wo de yisi!" (You don't understand my meaning) and proceeded to tell me off for being a 24 year old woman and crying. It turns out he was just saying that the money I gave him was going to pay for his gas but between my mediocre Chinese and his accent I interpreted wrongly. He kept telling me there was no need to cry and I flat out refused to answer or respond and told him I didn't want any tissues thank you very much. After over an hour of playing out all the ways this kind of thing goes wrong in my head, Kaifeng greeted us with some fake towers. He pulled over to the side of the road, called me a cab, gave the driver 20 yuan to help me find my way and said goodbye. I felt bad, because I cried and had been rude and he had turned out to be honest and got me to Kaifeng. Then I realized if he was actually honest, he would have returned the money I had used when trying to get on a bus back in Zhengzhou that was supposed to go to city center and would have let me pay 25 yuan for a bus ticket instead of taking 500 and looking at me in disbelief when I said I didn't have that much cash in my wallet (and of course, this argument taking place on the side of a freeway). I didn't feel as bad when I realized that I was just fast money to some guy with long nails and too many questions on the edge of Zhengzhou. Then it got funny because either he had to leave me with a taxi because he didn't know Kaifeng well or I scared him pretty bad by screaming and crying. I don't think he understood that I didn't understand everything he was saying until that outburst. So there I was anxious for over an hour while this guy probably didn't know what to do with some wailing laowai in the passenger's seat. I still feel kind of bad about that...

After that madness, Kaifeng was probably my favorite out of the places I went too. I was a little outside of the city walls, which was inconvenient only because I insisted on going everywhere by foot. The walk itself wasn't bad, but the heat was and I've come back from Henan noticeably tanner from being out in the sun so much. The main street, Gulou jie, was very pretty at night and it was hard to walk with all the street food booths and tables out at night.

Kaifeng was actually my main motivation in coming out to Henan. First as the capital of the Northern Song dynasty but in flipping through a guidebook I'd also seen a note about a Jewish community that established itself in Kaifeng reaching back to the silk road. Though there's not much of a strong community today after China's changing winds, intermarriage, and as with many, incentive to go to bigger wealthier cities has dispersed China's Jewish people. Some families didn't tell their children or openly practice either so it's likely a number of people don't know if they have Jewish ancestry. I did find that there was one family still living near the site of where the synagogue used to be located and that there was a guide who spoke English and could provide information about the Kaifeng Jews. In walking down Gulou jie and walking onto Shudian Lu before making my way towards the hutongs and the former site of the synagogue, it became clear that Kaifeng didn't have money to go around quite like Beijing, Shanghai, or even Xi'An where people go to see the terra cotta warriors. The bright lights, modern shopping malls, lines of food carts, underground walkways gave way to pavement and stores more geared to necessities than brand names or slick posters. I did see a few things under construction and in progress while wandering, but the money and lights seemed pretty heavily concentrated into one space.

I arrived early to meet my guide and wandered around her neighborhood for a bit. All throughout the city, there are signs advertising halal food and it seems that the Muslim community is still pretty sizeable. One door surprised me by having a red paper square turned on its point and except for the Arabic writing, looking like any other kind of new year decoration. In a nod to the no longer standing synagogue, alleys have names like "Teaching the Torah Alley". Crawling around "Teaching the Torah Alley" brought me to a mosque that looked more like it was used for living than prayers, though one room was free of laundry or furniture which lead me to believe it was still in use. The hutongs were of course narrow, the living space looked a little tight, it was a bit dusty and dirty and I saw a few woks and pots set on what looked like old brick or mud stoves. When I passed some of the hutongs I was startled to find a big white Catholic church that looked rather pristine and recent. It was certainly a neighborhood with character and I liked it a lot, but that's easy for me to say as a traveler. I hesitate to romanticize when I sense that it wasn't the poorest part of town (no one was starving or begging or struck me as desperate), but neither was it the wealthiest. My guide later told me that part of the mix I saw was because the foreigners from the silk road lived together in one part of the city and that a Catholic group in communication with the Jewish community had built the church. I can honestly say I've never been to a corner of China quite like it. I made my way back downtown where I visited Da Xiang Guo Si, a large Buddhist temple. I normally really enjoy temples and taking time to study all the different details but this time I just kind of wandered and didn't really look. I saw nothing of the big thousand armed Guanyin so I missed out big time or timed things badly. But in the following days I'd make up for it in sheer number of Buddhas seen in the course of a day at the Longmen caves.

After Kaifeng, I made my way to Luoyang. Luoyang is also a key city in Chinese history but it hasn't retained much of its imperial structures (though the city museum has some really cool things). I should have taken the time to see more, but most of my time was spent at the Longmen caves. I had my fill of Buddhist art, paid a visit to the poet Bai Juyi, and then began to make the trip towards Dengfeng where I planned to stay for three nights and explore the area after seeing Shaolin temple.

 I had something of a strange greeting at Dengfeng and the hostel overall seemed safe and the staff was friendly, but it was sort of weird too. I had a moment at the bus station where I was trying to convey where I was a going and a man told me it was going to cost 30 yuan for a ride. I'd read that it should only cost 7 yuan, so I kept insisting otherwise but he seemed firm. I started going with him, worried that after working so hard to convey what I wanted it would be rude to step out of things. Then I heard one of the other guys laughing and I turned around and glared. He waved and told me to go. I began to realize that if someone is ripping you off, you actually may not owe them anything and wound up leaving him and asking one of the cab drivers. The driver wouldn't turn on the meter and charged me 15. Not 7, but not 30 either. (30 is the flat rate that all drivers charge for going to Shaolin temple from Dengfeng, but I was trying to find my room in Dengfeng and felt it was ridiculous to get the same rate I would have for going out of town.) Losing that 500 yuan on the way to Kaifeng really hurt and made me realize I waste too much energy believing that people will compromise and respond well to politeness. There's nothing wrong with saying "That's not what I want" and walking the other way or not responding at all. I've been kicking myself lately for all the times I've struggled to say "no" to people who honestly don't deserve any other response (ie, some guy touching me in a Swiss train station talking about how much he misses his good obedient Japanese girlfriend and asking about my virginity, I'm getting frustrated with how I'm running out of ways to politely suggest I'm not interested when I should really be screaming "NO"). It's not selfish or rude. It's assertiveness and looking after myself. I can't believe I still have to work at fighting off that part of myself. I have to admit, one of the joys of learning tai chi this year has been tui shou. For an hour or two, my teacher gives me permission to and asks me to push him or throw him. It's better than being passive aggressive, it's really fun, and I guess it's one way I've begun to quietly assert myself.

As someone who's spent some time nerding out over the philosophical side of China's martial arts, I was excited to finally be at Shaolin temple as not only a sightseer, but as someone who now had some experience in a martial art. I wanted to see what I'd pick up on in Shaolin that differed from what I learned with tai chi. I also really love images of Bodhidharma/Damo, the monk said to have meditated in a cave above Shaolin for 9 years and have developed exercises for the Shaolin monks who were a little out of shape after largely focusing on spiritual matters. He came to China from India as a result, has a very distinct visage as tends to happen with foreigners in Chinese art. You'll find him around Chan/Zen temples throughout China.

The crowds weren't as bad as I thought they would be, though there were a number of tour groups coming through, easy to see with their yellow flags and headsets which ensured everyone could hear what the guide was saying. It tended to be most packed directly in front of the temple, everything else was pretty mellow. I was surprised when I was able to walk right up to the pagoda forest and take pictures until I realized I was standing out in the sun and that all the other Chinese tourists were nearby under the trees. Pale skin is the ideal here, so most likely people were trying to avoid getting a tan (which I didn't bother thinking about while wandering around and as a result, am now in two tones, might have the second sunburn of my life, and came back to people practicing the words "Do you use sunscreen?" when they saw my face). So I had a big sunny patch all to myself to look around and take photos before moving on to some of the other sights around Songshan.

I kept looking up at a big statue of Bodhidharma a few kilometers up the hill behind Shaolin temple.  I kind of wanted to see it, but I wasn't sure what would really be waiting for me at the top other than a cave. After lunch, I decided to go for it and buy a few bottles of water for the walk up. I think the hardest part was when I got really close and asked a nun who was selling a variety of goods if I could sit for a bit and she just repeated "Wu fen zhong"(In 5 minutes) while pointing up the mountain. So I made my way up sweating and tanning as people stared and commented on the state of my face. When I did get to the cave, there wasn't much but there was a sense of peace not found below at the temple. A few of us sat down in the shade just outside of the cave and two men sat inside the dimly lit cave meditating as Bodhidharma supposedly sat there staring at a wall for 9 years. (One story has it that his eyes closed for a long period of time and to ensure that it never happened again while he was sitting there, he cut off his eyelids and they became tea leaves. The tea was useful for keeping monks awake and focused.) I took a peek inside at the pink and green lotus shaped lights and as my eyes adjusted, I was able to make out Bodhidarma's facial features rising out of the shiny yellow robe covering the rest of him. As someone who doesn't really identify with any religion, I didn't feel right stepping into the middle of the meditating men and poking around too much so I just went outside, bought another bottle of water and rested. I gave up on going all the way to the statue since the cave was my primary interest and I didn't want anymore stairs. It's been a while since I've gone on a hike. It felt really good and being surrounded by trees, rocks, and bugs was kind of like home though the obvious lack of oak trees and douglas firs combined with the humidity reminded me I was in China. When I got to the bottom, I rested some and grabbed a few things to eat. People kept asking if I was a wushu student. Maybe it's because I was a sweaty mess. There were students of all ages and all nationalities who would pop up around the area. I was surprised when I ran into a whole American family wearing the loose grey pants worn by all the monks and again when I saw two tall Americans holding weapons and posing with tourists (it looked like they lived at the temple and had been asked to do this). The idea of coming back as a student rather than a sightseer is tempting. I made my way out and picked up a few souvenirs before heading down into Dengfeng and making my way to the hostel. I wasn't sure if I'd have energy for the next day, but I figured out the buses and made my way to Zhongyue Temple and Songyan Academy (Songshan, where Shaolin is located, is actually a really important Taoist mountain and it seemed right to visit both the famous Chan/Zen temple and the Taoist temple).

Zhongyue was also a tourist site, but much less so. It was very empty, more a place of worship than a place for sightseeing but I did see a tour group on my way out and had to pay about 30 yuan for admission. People saw me alone and I felt bad turning them away when they told me I could get a tour for 20 yuan since I was alone but then I remembered that it's kind of ok to say you don't want the things you don't want. I felt a little shy about going inside the halls since people kept calling me in to pray and I don't really identify strongly with anything, so it seemed kind of wrong for me to come in and start posing (though I know China is a sort of fluid place when it comes to religion). After quietly slipping in and out and trying to politely step away from women calling me to kowtow, I went to the hall of 60 gods where people find the god of their birth year and pay their respects. A woman working there followed me in, told me to get down and pay my respects to Buddha and the god for 1991 (and other years, the traditional Chinese calendar has 12 animals for each year as many know and in addition to this, there are 5 elements, so 60 years makes a full cycle and that's why they had 60 instead of 12 gods). I had to pay 10 yuan for a charm that I put in my wallet too. I walked away trying to figure out if it was super disrespectful for me to not pay my respects to all the other main gods or wrong for me go through these rites without any claim to Taoism aside from practicing Tai Chi. I finally decided that the temple probably needed the money to support itself and if nothing else, I was helping the temple with my small contribution. It was a really nice temple, older than many I had seen and I studied the peeling paint and designs that told me they either didn't have the money to restore or had managed to preserve a lot. In one hall, there were 4 impressive figures, all carved out of wood and elegantly dressed. One was an emperor, as indicated by his bright robes, one was a concubine (and she had a beautiful headdress with wooden pearls hanging in front of her face), and there was an elegantly dressed girl on either side of the pair. They were smaller, so my guess is they were serving the much larger two in the middle. In the courtyard, there were some metal soldiers dating to the Song dynasty. Aside from visitors, guides (most of whom were sitting and talking without much to do), and myself, there were men with top knots quietly watching over the halls, altars, and the fires that burned for offerings. It was quite a contrast to the crowds and shops at Shaolin.

I made my way back to Zhengzhou to catch the train to Zhuzhou with my charm from Zhongyue in my wallet and another charm from Shaolin, feeling confident that I'd make my way home without issue (and except for the train running an hour late, I did). It's not really my style to speed through a place, but in order to get a little sightseeing in this summer after waiting for my visa and still squeeze in time to go home before school starts again I didn't have much of a choice. Thanks for sticking it out with me this far into a long post. This week was a little wild at times, but it taught me something important about asserting myself and saying "no" in between letting my nerd self indulge in old capitals and temples and learning about Henan's unique place in Chinese culture. And at the other end of things, Nanjiecun's focus on the working man over gods. It was a satisfying week and now I'm happily looking forward to two weeks back in the mountains where I grew up before getting into another school year and more China adventures. Till next post!

Hello! I've been away for a bit with school and all but I haven't forgotten this blog. Spring has come to Zhuzhou, things are in bloom and it's beginning to get warm. The countdown to the zhongkao has begun and there are signs everywhere telling students how long they have until the big high school entrance/placement exam. In the meantime, I've been fighting off the urge to dream about other things and other places as I figure out where to go from here and remember I have a job to do. I saw something listed for an English and Spanish teacher in Foshan, and I have to keep asking myself if I'd be in China to teach again or if it's less about teaching than it is about travel. I'm thinking of going to western Hunan for the next break I have and seeing Fenghuang and Zhangjiajie. On a more extended break, I might be interested in Henan province and checking out one of the tai chi schools where you can stay and train for a month. But back to spring festival:

Hanoi surprised me. I realize that since I was only in Hanoi when I was in Vietnam my observations are limited but I wasn't expecting it to be as open as it was. One of my guidebooks told me to get a VPN for things like facebook, but no one needed it and facebook wasn't blocked at all. I ran into a number of tourists from America and Europe as well as backpackers with dreads. Aside from pho and banh mi, I honestly didn't know much about Vietnam but listening to some of the people around I sensed that I wasn't alone. When I visited Hoa Lo prison, it was pretty empty throughout. The exhibits related to when it was a French prison holding Vietnamese prisoners were quiet. There was a middle aged American couple ahead of me in one room filled with shackled mannequins and I was surprised and kind of embarrassed when they stopped for a photo with all the fake prisoners. I was completely alone in another exhibit with sensors so that patriotic music followed me everywhere as I read about independence. When I got towards the end where they had things about war with America and John McCain's flight suit on display, I was surprised to suddenly find myself surrounded by people. A video played in one room, with footage very purposefully put together as it alternated between destroyed cities and hungry children and American prisoners smoking and playing cards. In the subtitles, it referred to the prison as "Hanoi Hilton 'Hoa Lo'" with quotation marks as if it were actually the Hilton and "prison" was just a nickname for a comfortable war time stay. The parting words were "Goodbye, uninvited guests. How lucky you were to be in a Vietnamese prison." Those are strange words to leave with as a tourist in a former prison. Aside from that, I never faced any issues related to my being American. If anything, my being American caused people to tell me prices in dollars even when I paid in Vietnamese dong. When I paid for my visa, I also had to come to the airport prepared with USD. When I flew out through airport at the end of my trip, the prices were all listed in USD and I struggled to work through the math so that I could spend the last of my dong.

Having read enough about Vietnam to know about its relation to China (and enough Chinese to see the connection between "YueNan", Vietnam, and "NanYue", an old kingdom that spanned parts of Southern China and Vietnam) I was kind of excited to explore connections and traditions that still seemed strong down south. I also had the great opportunity to see how they do the lunar new year in Hanoi so I got to see the city done up in lights, the flower markets, the fruit trees strapped to the backs of bikes, women and children in bright clothes and ao dai, people paying visits to different temples and the smell of diesel as people poured in (or out) to see family.

​After over 20 hours of being squished into a seat going from Xi'An to Zhuzhou, I finally came back to my apartment. I thought I'd have more time to ask questions and get work done before class on Monday but before I knew it, I'd passed out at around 4 or 5PM and woke up thinking it must be late since it was dark out and kind of quiet. My tablet said it was 6AM the next day. Whoops. I've got my gas started up again and Zhuzhou was dry for a while but now it's good and wet again. I've been lazy, kept some frozen buns and dumplings in the freezer to make sure I had something to eat whenever I got back so I've been making that for my meals. I also decided to message my liaison to see if I had class tomorrow. The answer is yes, 4 of them, and do you have the textbook? So I need to make a lesson plan and figure out what 4 classes I'm going to tomorrow. Ugh. I need another day to recover from that train ride. I don't quite understand why people go up and down the cars trying to sell stuff to people who paid for the cheapest tickets. In one memorable demonstration, a man in a railway workers uniform looped a belt around the luggage rack and stood on the little table in front of me while tugging and leaning back to prove how strong the belt was. The hard seat slow train experience is frequently not recommended for long trips, but I've done it about 4 times by now anyway, passing the time with people laughing at you or shouting "kan bu dong!" as you fill out 20 pages in your notebook, read a book, or try to talk to the people you will be close to for hours. On the bright side, this seems to get easier every time. Time seemed to fly by, but I was also better prepared than previous times.

Now that I'm back and in a better position to reflect on the past month, I decided to write about Beijing. Actually, part of why I've never been is because I was always kind of worried I'd just feel lost in a big city. I knew the Forbidden City was there, I knew the Great Wall was up there...but for some reason, it just never appealed as much as some of the other parts of China. It was a pleasant surprise to find that it wasn't as horribly overwhelming as I assumed it would be. It helped that I spent 5 days out there with a list of major things to do and remembered that when I went to London, I had to break things down by picking a neighborhood or a monument to explore from each day. I was surprised when some people told me 5 days was a lot. A man from Bordeaux told me he came for a weekend to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, then came back because the Forbidden City was closed. I guess for some, that's essentially Beijing.

Being in a part of China that receives more travelers from abroad was in some ways, pleasant and in other ways a little frustrating. More people spoke English and switched when I struggled (though they would ask questions or mention in passing that I looked Asian and the most tactful tended to say "But your hair is black"). I was a little less of a mystery. At times, people would hear me speak English and ask me to translate as when I went to an hour-long opera show that was clearly made to introduce people to the different roles in traditional opera rather than run through an entire show. At the venue, you paid different prices for a ticket which determined the kind of seat you got. When you went inside to sit, someone would look at your ticket and how much you paid and direct you to a seat where you could enjoy a pot of tea and some snacks. I paid the cheapest (180 RMB) and was directed towards a seat in the back where I watched as others came in and tea was brought out. One woman kept moving around after one of the staff showed her to her seat and saying "I want to be here...no...maybe here...no..."and the other woman working there followed her and spoke in Chinese, telling her that she couldn't just sit anywhere. They came towards me as I was reading, and the woman who kept moving around asked if I was alone, if she could sit, here, here, or here, and because I was speaking in English the other woman who had repeatedly told her what seats she could and could not sit in simply pointed and said "Ni shuo yingyu" ("You, speak Chinese"). To be honest, I repeated what the woman selling tickets had told me, watched her body language, and the only words I knew for sure were "280 yuan" and "180 yuan". I felt terrible because I know a real interpreter would be careful to fully translate but I wasn't a real interpreter and it seemed simpler than watching them run all over the theater. She finally sat down next to me and I got to hear about her travel plans for two weeks. It was fun to talk to her at first, then tiring as I listened to her itinerary and her thoughts on what I was and wasn't doing ("You're not going to do kung fu? You're not going to do taichi? You're not going...?"). She was going to see and do everything, and I had to admire that and it made sense for someone who only had two weeks. I shamelessly bought an Irish coffee at a Beijing opera venue because I'd been standing out in the cold beforehand and didn't enjoy such things in Zhuzhou. At the end of the performance, I left and she was still busily going over her map plotting out how to cover as much ground as possible in Beijing.

In a lot of ways, I enjoy talking to other people who choose to come to China. They are often other young people on their way to something or trying something out here. I like to think it takes an interesting person to choose teaching here, given all the ideas people can have about China. But over my travels, there were times I got tired. People who would say it was a shame that my parents didn't teach me Chinese, people who hoped I could help them translate something, and people who didn't quite grasp what I was doing in China or what my situation was like often made me want the relief that came with disappearing into a crowd of other dark-haired people. My anonymity here is one of the things I love and the better I become at Chinese, the better I disappear into the crowds here (most of the time). People thought I worked way out in the countryside surrounded by rice paddies and when I said that I worked in a city people asked me about factories and I would mention that it was industrial and that we had "foggy" days but since I taught at a private school where students pay 5,600 each term to attend this wasn't a part of the city as immediately familiar to me. Then they would ask about parents and look confused when I told them I didn't know any more than one parent who worked for the city. Even in speaking with others who taught or worked in China, it became quite clear that the life I lived was very different from the lives of those who worked in Guangzhou, Beijing, or Shanghai. I've always sensed that, but I only realized that fully when I spoke to others whose experience of China was limited to big cities such as these and who had no idea what pleco was (an app that works as a dictionary) and didn't discover that they couldn't use Google translate in China until it was too late.

Anyway, when people weren't looking to me for translation or to tell me it's a pity I couldn't speak Chinese I found I really liked Beijing. (I've been trying to remember if I ever pulled aside a white American while I was in Europe and told him his parents should have taught him Gaelic/French/Spanish/German/Romansh/etc. It's possible I have?) I stayed around Xinjiekou in a hostel down a hutong and it was fascinating to see the different buildings as I went around the city. But I also couldn't help wondering what it's like to live in one, what plumbing and electricity must be like. I remember how in Italy, people would sometimes talk about wanting to remodel or do something to their homes and all plans would be stalled or completely canceled upon discovering some ruins or medieval structure or something. China has a lot of history, but that story isn't quite so common as buildings go down and come up quite often. I can't help thinking of Okakura Kazuko's The Book of Tea when he talks about impermanence and wooden buildings and one particular building that must be rebuilt every twenty years. After 4 years in Europe and being asked to "read" monuments and spaces, China has kind of challenged me because it doesn't always fit so neatly into what I learned after going through so many museums, past so many fountains, restored churches, and murals. At times, it's more the idea than the actual building. When I went to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, I knew it had a lot of restoration work (the toboggan ride didn't strike me as a Ming dynasty), but I knew there was a wall there with a history and a purpose. It'd be cool to go out to other sections or "wild wall" where restoration work hasn't been carried out. I finished all of Peter Hessler's books during my travels and couldn't help thinking of "Country Driving" as I wandered around. There weren't many tourists, and it was icy which was beautiful but a little dangerous at times as patches in shadow wouldn't melt away.


I found myself surrounded by an interesting group as I went up with people from America, Brazil, and Amsterdam. I listened to a father and son speak to each other in Dutch and Mandarin and thought of all the times I accidentally stumbled into a Chinese community in Europe and the silent exchange that would go on, the studying of faces, the unasked questions, the careful dialogue in Spanish or Italian, the recognition, and confusion that took place. On my way down, I spoke with a woman who had been doing graduate work on education and gender and teaching in Foshan. We traded WeChat/Weixin info and tried to meet at the Summer Palace the next day but we entered from different sides and wound up exploring alone but communicating off and on so that we finally met at the Fragrant Buddha Temple in the middle before she had to leave for a late night flight. The Summer Palace was beautiful, unlike most of what you will find written of Empress Dowager Cixi who in the 19th century used funds that were supposed to go towards the navy in order to restore the Summer Palace. Once on TV, they had a special thing about tofu and how Cixi supposedly liked the tofu for her stinky tofu to be really fresh and the host cracked some joke about "national stink". There is one boat on Kunming lake, but it doesn't seem terribly seaworthy and a lot of guides (such as Lonely Planet) make some comment on Cixi's one naval contribution.

Aside from the stops everyone makes in Beijing (the Forbidden City/Palace Museum, which is only more amazing when you realize how much is closed off to the public) I also enjoyed the Yonghegong Lama Temple and Nanluoguxiang, a great neighborhood for hutongs, souvenir shopping, and getting something to eat or drink. I went back twice for a "Hutong Pizza" and I wonder how many other women show up alone to eat a 10" pizza. The first time was no big deal, the second time, I got an appetizer and a pizza and the man kept coming back and asking if it was delicious, if I was OK, and if I was going to finish it. He should have seen me eat a duck after I skipped lunch and went to the Great Wall. I'm amazed no one said anything to me then, but I wonder what they were thinking.

Oh, and the food. Some people have told me they're glad the Cantonese came and influenced Chinese food in America but as I travel around China I've really come to enjoy all the things I never got much exposure to both in America and as someone with roots down south. Last year, it was crossing the bridge noodles in Yunnan and this time it seemed to be Beijing's "baodu", a tripe dish in broth which was perfect for walking out in the cold at night. I knew the prices would probably go up in Beijing and Shanghai as compared to Zhuzhou, but I was still surprised by the cost of food at times. I had a great time on Wangfujing food street where I enjoyed a hot bowl of baodu, some lamb skewers, and fried ice cream. Vendors would sometimes pick up on my accent and just switch into English. Occasionally, they mentioned that I looked kind of Asian or that I had black hair. There was something comforting in realizing that even though my foreignness didn't throw people off as badly as in some places I've been, people still had questions and I still had well-rehearsed answers. I didn't have any good answers for the man who sold me lamb and told me that the grilled scorpion was also very good. I admit, they looked very crispy but they were also over 20 RMB per skewer. There were lots of things on sticks I'd never seen grilled on sticks before down Wangfujing street, it was obviously a kind of novelty food place as well as a place for traditional foods so there were souvenir shops and lots of people but it was kind of fun. At one stall, a man would ask what you wanted and the other man would prepare it while singing your order which made a lot of people stop and laugh. When I realized this was at the other end of the street where they had a large foreign language bookstore, I was kind of in heaven. It'd been a long time since I had any access to so many print books in English, but I held off on buying any since I was traveling out of one backpack and would still be traveling for a while. You think hard about what you're willing to carry for weeks at a time when you live out of a single bag. It's also the reason I skipped out on a qipao in Shanghai, with the hopes of possibly getting something cheaper in Zhuzhou.

To make a long post short, Beijing seemed to have everything: all kinds of food, all kinds of architecture, books...but is it so surprising that it should have all that as the capital? Despite my initial thoughts about just feeling lost in some big city like the first time I went to Paris or London, it didn't seem to take me long to latch onto some places and find my way around them, especially as I got more familiar with the subway system. I love subway systems, especially after taking a good look at the intersection near my hostel and seeing the left turn lane all the way over on the far right lane. But really, it grew on me. There were a lot of times when I would go see a temple or something and just drop all my other plans to go for a walk and study all the buildings until I started feeling tired enough to want a coffee or something. Which is something of a prelude to how I spent my time in Vietnam, which is incredible for its coffee culture. When I had my fill of tripe, duck, and buildings, I made my way to the airport and met a woman catching a flight to San Jose. I wish my Chinese had been good enough to hold a conversation, but all I got was that her son worked in Silicon Valley and stupidly all I could really say was that there were a lot of Chinese people there (but it's true...). We wished each other well when we parted ways and I went to Hanoi thinking of home and how many times I'd known people on the other side of that story, people who had left home or people whose parents had left and the classmates I had who identified themselves in different ways. I couldn't help thinking too about how proud she must be to have a son who made it through the system here in China and found work in another country. Not because America is perfect, but for all the success it represents to have made it so far. I hope she had a happy new year.