Adventure's End in Oregon

 

Like many best friends, Katy and I have developed code words and phrases that mean more to us than they would to outsiders. Our shared language involves both inside jokes and references to past conversations, which advances the intricacy of the language we use with each other. There are phrases such as "upgrade" (when we go from living without a modern convenience to living with it); "sunflowers will grow here" (a situation in which jedi mind trickery will be used to get what one wants); and "good shit" (stuff that is valuable to one person and garbage to others). These terms (and many more) make our language with each other richer, more meaningful, and perhaps a little more special. They're also just fun to sprinkle around. My favorite such term we use is "playing house".

Playing house with Katy in Oregon is the act of us owning a home, being eager to improve it, but being mostly ignorant about what to do. Normally it's fun and exciting, occasionally hard and messy, but usually its a little surreal. Well it's definitely real, but I regularly feel self-aware of the markers of suburban life and question how I got here. I'm from New York City, I've only ever lived in cities before. This is my first time living in a house . . . and we own it. It's mostly great, but occasionally a little daunting. I sometimes feel like I'm missing details because I'm not used to lawns, gutters and HVAC systems. Occasionally it feels like a test in which I'm trying to figure out the right answer. For example: we have two cars, and a two-car garage even though Katy often bikes to work. So where and how should I park the cars? I don't know. We also have an unused leaf blower and have yet to install the vent fan we bought a year ago for our second bathroom. If I were to grade myself on playing house, I'd probably get passing marks but with the comment "needs improvement".

We have a bunch of plans for what to do with our home in the next year or so, both inside and out. For our backyard it's exciting work that I've never actually done before and am afraid won't work.  When I started up our new weed whacker for my first time last night I knew it was an upgrade from the shears and lopers I had bought last year, but I also considered watching a safety video on YouTube just to learn what I don't know. There's so much to potentially learn about yard-care, I never knew! Inside our house I'd like to replace our base boards and re-do the ceiling, but I've never done those things and expect it'll be more videos online paired with some how-to websites. I think what makes it "playing house" and not "living house" is that we still lack some of the basic skills and efficiencies we would expect of someone our age - i.e. adults.

When we were in China, I felt a little juvenile. Part of it was the language barrier: I hadn't felt confused and alienated by what was going on around me in such a way since I was a child. Additionally, we were living a very cosmopolitan lifestyle with luxuries and I had very few responsibilities or worries, so life was carefree. The apartment building we lived in had doormen, a concierge, housekeeping services and more. While I often cooked dinner, I did so for pleasure, nutrition and comfort. If I didn't feel like cleaning up after dinner we didn't have to, the maid came twice a week. We didn't have ice cube trays so would call housekeeping every time we wanted ice. We would tip and it was appreciated, but there was something that sat funny with me about not even making ice for myself. It didn't bother me enough to go buy ice cube trays, but I was aware that life was especially low-maintenance, like back when I was a teenager and my parents made ice for me.

I've been listening to Johnny Cash again recently. "I've Been Everywhere" has always been one of my favorite songs by him. When I was in college and first discovered The Man in Black I used to wonder how many of the scores of places he mentions in the song I would get to see. Later in college as I traveled Europe and across America, I wondered what my version of the song would sound like. A decade later, I wonder if I have been enough places to write my version of the song. Have I been everywhere I'm going to go already? Being home now feels like the start of an era that's going to go on for the rest of my life. Like I've had my travels and I'm here now to put down roots, and not just literally plant roots. Some things I'm doing now I'll be doing every fall for as long as we live in Oregon; other things I'll be doing every week for as long as we live in this house, like garbage.

Even though we didn't get back long ago, we already are resuming patterns of eating and living we have developed in years of living together, plus starting new ones that are specific to Oregon. This week we found ourselves cooking huge batches of beans and eggplant; last week we harvested at least fifty pounds of apples from our backyard tree; we've been to the local farmer's market the past three weekends, and we already have our yearly pesto frozen for the upcoming winter. We are also slowly improving our home by mounting one paper towel holder at a time and killing wasp nests as they continue to reappear.  I feel home in our house, but I'm not quite used to that feeling of being home yet. It's been over a year since I felt at home, and that was before we were married and still lived on the East Coast. So even though I feel home, it's still also very much a new feeling of home. Oregon is our next great adventure, and we are blessed that we have the resources to live a wonderful life here.

In reflection of the past year, one thing I have learned is that I don't need a lot of stuff, but I do appreciate the stuff I do have and its nice to be reunited with it. I spent the majority of the past 8 months with just a backpack and a suitcase full of clothes, books and a computer or two. Now I'm struggling to even unpack the boxes we had put in storage back in February. It seems like a lot of stuff. More than once I've thought of something I own, figured out what box it was in, went to that box and pulled out only that single object. I know it drives Katy crazy that I prefer to unpack this way, but it makes those objects seem magical and more meaningful, as if I conjured up the object with my thoughts alone. I don't NEED my stuff, and I proved that to myself in the past six months, but I like my stuff. Admittedly, I probably have too much stuff, and it is a tiny bit overwhelming to suddenly have so much more stuff than I used to have access to. I probably too many clothes, but it's also really nice to have more than eight t-shirts to choose from. Maybe there's a happy medium out there somewhere.

I feel a little bit like Bilbo Baggins at the end of the Hobbit. We documented our great journey in writing and have come back to the Shire a.k.a. Oregon, to live out the good life. This beautiful, green, quaint world full of jolly drinking weirdos is our new home and quite a good one to end up in after the adventures we have had. While there may be an upcoming spree of globe-trotting activity, I doubt we will ever return to the pace of unbridled jet setting we experienced this last year or so. This is my final chapter in our adventure blog, continuing it as a suburbanite doesn't quite seem right. It's been incredibly helpful to publicly share my experiences and I hope you enjoyed reading them. Alas and alack, it's over! But I'm totally okay with chopping at blackberries, playing house, and making my own ice for the rest of my life.

the Jersey Shore i know

While the Jersey Shore has never been a second home for my brother and I, we have spent many August days in our life down by the beach not far from the boardwalk.

Hanging out with the family down the Jersey Shore

When my mom was a kid, she used to come down to the Jersey Shore with my grandparents and uncles. My uncle Lou has continued to come down here, and now there is always a clan of cousins and family by marriage to celebrate the warm ocean water with.

A few years ago we were hanging out with my older cousin Jon, getting beers by the boardwalk when he took a gulp of his beer bottle and blurted out, "this is the bar Snooki got punched at." My brother and I had just been laughing at how weird it would be to see celebrities walking around getting filmed and having random people freak out about seeing them. "So is this place known for being violent?" my brother quipped back. "Not more than any bar, but that fight was on television," retorted Jon.

Personally, I never got into the show The Jersey Shore, but many of my friends did and I became an involuntary consumer of the phenomenon. I couldn't tell you how many seasons there were, but among my New York friends the place, the Jersey Shore, was relegated to MTV reality TV show status. For me it's personal when people (mainly New Yorkers) hate on the Jersey Shore. My family has history down there, we have family ties and meaningful experiences that only could have happened down here.Also having spent many summer days down the shore, we also have something of a routine, which admittedly kind of mimics much of what the MTV show exemplified.  They claimed GTL: Gym-Tan-Laundry. But my family lives EECC: Exercise, Eat, Clean, Cocktails.

          
    That's a Brooklyn Dodgers hat on my dad by the way.

Exercise
A shore day doesn't start at any specific time; there's no need to wake up early but it's always a better if you do. Regardless of what time you start your day down the shore, its always best to start with a little exercise. One day I woke up after noon, but did a short dumbbell routine before breaking my fast at lunch. It makes one feel better. We often go running as a family down the beach through Island Beach State Park. Less than a mile from us he beachfront gets pretty deserted except for fishermen and the occasionally beach blanket wielding seekers of solitude. Running on the sandy-beached shoreline clears my head like nothing else. Quiet and tranquility. There is so much natural stimulation between constantly adjusting my feet, to the tide ebbing and flowing, seagulls and sandpipers, driftwood and deaded liquor bottles. My brain doesn't even have time to go blank, its too busy constantly paying attention to not be zen.

Eat
After exercising on the Jersey Shore it's usually time to eat, but not necessarily a huge meal. Depending on the workout, the temperature, and the time, it might be a sandwich or a snack, or occasionally a big meal. We used to eat our main midday meal on the beach but we've eventually gravitated towards a split day, revolving around being on the beach twice, in morning and afternoon. This necessitated a more flexible midday eating schedule. Now nothing is guaranteed, except that there will always be food and it's always alright to take a nap as long as you make it to the best time of day to be on the beach: the late afternoon.

Clean: Laundry/Shower
After we get back from the beach (usually before 6 but rarely before 5pm) everyone in my family splits up and takes a shower, naps, self-grooms, etc. I enjoy this time of day possibly even more than the beach. Everyone has a post-beach glow, attends to their own needs, and enjoy at respite from the day's hot sun in the luxuries of indoors and plumbing. {It's important to separate indoors from plumbing as a staple of The Shore is to enjoy an outdoor shower on your way in to your home.} After the beach is also when we do laundry and change out of sandy clothes. If I'm not terribly sandy I often enjoy skipping the actual shower, as I love the feel of ocean salt on my skin as I sleep.

Cocktail Hour
Once everyone is showered, shaved, changed, etc. we all regroup and have a cocktail. Margaritas are a popular cocktail, gin and tonic the classic highball, and Mexican lager often the beer of choice. Re-hydrating, cooling off in air conditioning, and having a snack are all a part of our near daily ritual down the shore. Whether we eat in, go out, or meet up with family, we usually enjoy a libation as the day slips into a seasonally late twilight and the weather starts to calm and cool

Driftwood I collected on my runs this year. Last year I collected seashells.

My life down the Jersey Shore might not be that much different from the MTV show, but they definitely got the routine wrong. It's not Gym-Tan-Laundry. It's Exercise-Eat-Clean-Cocktails. It's a shame that most people haven't had the opportunity to experience the Jersey Shore outside of reality TV, because it's a little peace of heaven that I couldn't be happier to regularly experience.

Bad English Translations and American Privilege

Over the past 5.5 months in China, English signs have made my life easier.  Chinese words are incredibly intimidating to a non-native speakers because they are comprised of characters, rather than letters.  Sentences don’t even have spaces in them, requiring the reader to know where each word stops and the next begins.  All of this would make navigating around a city of 24 million people (or a country of 1+ billion people) next to impossible.  But thankfully, English signs are pretty common and they make the difference between being able to independently explore a place and relying solely on smartphones and tour guides to help me get around.

This perfectly nice sign meant that it was easy for me to find my way through the Chengdu Panda Research Base

I recognize this as a form of “white”, but really American, privilege.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Chinese characters written on a formal road sign, metro stop, or other location in the US.  (I’m sure there are a few instances where I’m wrong, but broadly speaking this is incredibly rare).  Growing up in Vermont and so close to Montreal, every once in a while the highway signs are in French, but even then there aren’t very many.  (Plus French and English are much more closely related than English and Chinese).   

So all this is to say that I am thankful English signs exist in China.

And… sometimes the English translations are pretty funny.  Since my first weekend here, I’ve been taking pictures of the best translations I have found from all around the country.  I’ve told a few of my expat Shanghai friends about this post as it has been in development and they too have a strange fascination and appreciation for these signs.  They help us find humor in situations that can be challenging and frustrating.  And some of them are worth sharing.  (At least I think so.  But to be honest I don't know how well this is going to translate for people who haven't spent time in China.) 

These signs fall into a few categories:

• It's a typo, and the new word that they've created is amusing
• The dictionary definition works, but it’s never the word I would pick
• What the English says is the exact opposite of what the word means
•  I have no idea what the sign is supposed to mean

So without further ado, here are the “best” (or maybe the worst) signs I’ve found over the past 5.5 months here in China:

(and a note to readers - despite my best picture editing, these are probably easier to read from a computer screen than phone)

Typos

This reminded me of how Simon says "water"

Whishky sounds like a word people who've had too much whiskey might say

Maybe putting all the letters backwards was on purpose?

Because there are no "letters" in Chinese, sometimes they use letters as if they were characters.  For instance "clelegation" looks like "delegation".  At a different musuem, they were using upside m's for w's, and using h instead of n.

I think this supposed to be "cakes" but it took me forever to figure it out

How does one get "into" their pet?

Dictionary Definitions

This is outside a really ugly looking skyscraper that I'm not even sure is a residential building. I don't know why they are calling it a mansion. Plus a "group" mansion sounds pretty weird

With the whirligig of tim(e)...

Pool view sounds like a good thing!

This is closer to the desired meaning... but still it's a little extreme!

Apparently this one isn't a typo... this e-commerce site calls products "babies".  But when I translated it into English, I was surprised to have a website telling me to look at my baby

I believe this means no throwing

Check out the picture.  Why are they worried about people throwing keys into the toilet?

Want some fungus with that?

Exact Opposite

An ATM machine

Outside an elevator

Maybe this is just an issue of grammar. But to me it reads checking for anti-explosives, not checking for the purpose of preventing explosions

Still Confused

Worn by an employee in their campus cafeteria... Why would anyone think this is a good thing to wear to work?

Does photographing create forest fires?

Highest quality... you can tell because it's from the Denim "OEPT"

What is a cloak of a suite?

Panda-monium

This weekend, for my last trip in China, I decided that I needed to get to Chengdu so that I could see the pandas.  When I was researching the trip, I was surprised by the number of panda bases near Chengdu which all have different options for seeing pandas up close.  I decided to visit two panda bases, one in the center of Chengdu and another in a more rural area where I read that I could see pandas in a more “natural” setting.  I booked my flights with Ctrip (the local version of Kayak), picked a cheap but decently rated inn from Booking.com (the most used site in China), and negotiated with a few private drivers until I found one who was willing to drive me around for 3 days.  Other than that, I didn’t do much research or really have any idea what I was getting myself into.

On Friday morning, I headed to the airport, without out any cash.  After security, I went straight to the ATM to make sure I had enough cash for the trip.  I can get by in Shanghai without cash but I know that in more remote areas they often only accept cash.  The first ATM I went to said it couldn’t process my transaction, so I calmly tried the next one I saw.  After trying three ATMs, I started to get frantic because I knew I had less than 100 yuan ($15) which was not enough to pay for food, nevermind park entrance fees, the hotel, and driver.  I asked the information desk if there was a different company ATM and she send me on a wild goose chase to the other end of the airport where I found the SAME kind of ATM I had already tried.  At this point I was about as far away from my gate as possible and my flight was on “last call,” so I pleaded with one of the courtesy golf cart shuttle drivers to take me to my gate.  She indicated it would be ok, but it cost 10 yuan.  I was worried I didn’t even have that but figured I’d just get on the cart and then figure it out as she drove.  As we drove I scrounged together 10 yuan in 1 yuan bills and 1 yuan coins.  I was literally the last person to board the plane, but I made it.

The plane ride itself was uneventful.  Thankfully there was an ATM right when I landed and it worked.  I found my private driver who had a sign with my name on it and we got in the car.  My immediate reaction was that there were panda signs and statues everywhere, and also that it was a lot cooler than it had been when I was there two months ago.  (It was still 80 and super humid, but that’s how much my baseline has shifted over the course of a ridiculously hot/muggy Shanghai summer).

Pandas at the airport

Panda police officers

There are even panda statues climbing that building in the background

Panda trash can

Panda statues fishing

Pandas dancing?

We drove directly from the airport to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.  From my limited research, this was the best place to go for people who want to see many baby pandas who are so small they barely look like pandas.  But the websites also warned to be ready for crowds.  And boy were they right!  I am so so glad I waited 5 months to go here because I can’t imagine how offended/frustrated/put out I would have been if I had tried to do this before I had gotten used to people pushing me from behind, sometimes on purpose and sometimes without realizing it.  And to be honest, I was a little glad Simon wasn’t there because he never got quite as used to it as I did.  (Ask him sometime how he kept the old women at Disney from crowding us…)

The line for the nursery

Sightseeing bus line

But the panda viewing was truly amazing.  There were more pandas than I could count and the first ones I saw were outside in their enclosure.  One was up in a tree and the other was using a large cement basin as a hot tub, splashing the water around to keep itself cool.  I was lucky to see these two outside because almost all the pandas were inside due to the hot weather.  Still, they were pretty active (as far as pandas go) and at lots of different stages of development.  One of the most amazing was a very very young baby that barely looked like a panda at all.  There was a long line just to get into this area and then an employee yelling at everyone through a megaphone to keep going but despite all that unpleasantness it was still a special moment.

Chillin like a villain

Only a few weeks old

All different ages sleeping in the nursery

After about 3.5 hours at the panda base, I met up with my driver and we drove to the village of Bifengxia, which is outside of a small town called Ya’an.  It was on this point in the drive where I started questioning my trip and whether I could do this whole thing on my own.  I expected to end up in a town like we did in Zhangjiajie, where there were some touristy places and some restaurants, given that it’s right outside the entrance to the panda base.  But as the mountain road to the hotel got curvier and curvier and we passed through one town and kept going, I was afraid I was going to be stuck on the top of a mountain with no food. I cursed myself for only bringing one protein bar that would need to last me 2 dinners and 2 breakfasts and just hoped for the best.  I thought back to Simon’s vow during our wedding ceremony to always feed me, and I wished he were here to make sure that that happened.

Eventually, we found another small town on the road.  (There were less than 20 buildings in the whole area, so I’m not even sure it was a “town.”)  The driver asked a local for directions, they pointed us up a small road and the driver parked the car. I wasn’t sure it was where I needed to be, but he said it was so I got out and made sure he stayed nearby until I confirmed.  

This tattered sign theoretically announces the name of the hotel I booked

The hotel entrance was overwhelming.  There were about 15 Chinese teenagers eating dinner who all looked up from dinner and started staring at me and an employee with no English skills.  I felt really unsure in that moment: I had no way to communicate with the employee and the driver was leaving for the night, meaning if I needed to leave I wouldn’t have any way to leave other than walking down the road.  Thankfully, a nice lady named Alice greeted me and said that the owner wasn’t there and I couldn’t check in yet.  I protested and said I wanted to check in right away and she said that wasn’t possible. Alice then said she is just a guest, but she was helping translate.  She helped me find a chair and I sat down to (somewhat) patiently read The Atlantic.  After a few minutes, the worker started basically yelling at me and then Alice told me that he was trying to tell me my room was ready. 

I followed a young girl away from the hotel, down the road, and to a completely different inn.  The inn was even shabbier than the place I had checked in at, and it felt like it was more of a local’s house than an inn.  I was pretty sure they had overbooked the original inn and that they just had an agreement between the two of them.  The bathroom looked like it was built as an addition, because there was a huge window from the bedroom that faced the bathroom.  The red rug was worn and incredibly thin.  The floorboards were so flimsy I was afraid if I jumped I might fall through.  There was a no smoking sign in the room, but also a used ashtray.  And two signs saying to take care of your belongings.  (I had to ask a Nike friend to translate for me.)

I sat down on the bed, finished reading my article, and tried to calm down and relax a little bit.  This is rural China, after all, I told myself.  I felt like I shouldn’t have been so surprised by it all but I think it was all the harder because I was by myself.  Simon is the yin to my yang (or vice versa) and he has always been a steadying force when I start to freak out.  Also, I was hungry so I set out back to the original inn to see if they could feed me dinner.

Thankfully, this part was smooth.  As I walked up to the inn I planned out what I was going to eat – as this is a challenge between being a vegetarian and lacking basic food vocabulary.  I was nearly positive they would have scrambled eggs with tomatoes and their English menu had it listed!  I ordered this dish and rice and returned to reading my magazine.  This dish is the closest I have to Chinese comfort food – I think of it like my grilled cheese and I’ve literally never been to a Chinese restaurant that doesn’t have it.  I started digging in with my chopsticks, trying to refuel myself for the next day.

As I was eating dinner, the owner finally returned and Alice helped me have a conversation with him.  I asked him why I wasn’t staying in the inn I had booked and he said they were the same inn. I said I wanted to stay in the original location, which is what I had booked, and I wanted my “honeymoon room.” He said they are full and there is no honeymoon room.  He was blaming it all on Booking.com, but if he’s the owner then he owns the Booking site and he shouldn’t be advertising rooms that don’t exist.  He told me I could switch rooms the next day, which was a start in the right direction, and I asked for a discount given that they aren’t honoring my reservation.  At which point he told me that actually because it was the weekend I’d need to pay more than I was originally quoted.  I was growing increasingly frustrated.  It’s OK to overbook a hotel (I guess), but I felt like he was not being honest with me and taking advantage of me.  I couldn’t hold my tears back any longer and started crying, making a bunch of other guests come over to see what was happening and make me feel better.

Eventually he relented and said he wouldn’t charge me more and that I could switch first thing in the morning.  I slowly pulled myself together and tried to distract myself by talking to the other guests who could speak English.  They are all volunteers at the panda base and some had decent English skills.  They were having a party to celebrate one of the panda’s birthdays but when they went up to the bar area I said goodnight and went back to my hotel room to write my blog, watch an episode of TV, and get some sleep.  I know if Simon had been here we would have gone at least for a little while and that he would have made some good connections with the other guests.  But I was too afraid of losing it again and wanted to make sure that I was rested and recovered for day 2 of my last adventure in China…

****

Day 2 started off great.  Despite the firm bed and utter weirdness of the room, I slept well and felt rested for the morning.  I woke up at 7:45, packed my stuff, and came back to the original inn for breakfast.  As I was walking back to the first inn, I was actually starting to regret asking to switch hotels. I thought maybe the original inn would be too loud with all the teenagers staying there and I slept well enough so maybe I should just stay put.  But I felt like after the scene the night before, I couldn’t change my mind again.  So I just hoped for the best.  I had a traditional Chinese breakfast (rice porridge/soup-type thing and a hard boiled egg) and then a Japanese woman who had stayed at the inn handed me a chocolate croissant which was delicious.  I asked her where she got it – surprised that there was a western bakery in a town this small -and she told me she had brought it from Japan.  After scarfing down the croissant, I followed the volunteers to the panda base.

Overall, there were 18 pandas I saw at the base, some just a few weeks old and some mature adults.  I hurried past the first few panda enclosures so that I could get to the “kindergarten area”, where the one-year old pandas lived.  By far, my favorite pandas were the adolescents: old enough to move around but not so old that they were solitary and living by themselves.  The videos are even better than the pictures, but the internet is to slow so you'll just have to come visit me to see them!

At the kindergarten area, I ran into the Japanese woman and she started telling me about the pandas we were watching sleep.  One was up in a tree and looked so picture-perfect that I thought he was a statue.  The other was asleep on her back on some steps, close to the edge of the enclosure.  I learned that this woman was the one who had planned the party the night before for the panda’s first birthday.  She had traveled all the way from Japan just to be here for their birthday and had pictures on her phone of the pandas that other people had taken.  She described the male panda as “her baby” and seemed really attached to them.  I thought it was incredible that she could be so attached to two captive animals that don’t even live in her country, but I guess some people go crazy for pandas. 

After all the other panda statues I had seen, I was convinced this was fake until he woke up!

Sound asleep

I ended up spending an hour with this woman watching the pandas wake up and start eating breakfast.  She had done the official volunteer program the day before and helped feed them breakfast so she had the inside scoop on what was going on.  She was super into her visit - she even had one of those old-school camcorders with her to take high-quality video.  Unfortunately, her English wasn’t great either (and I couldn’t even remember hello in Japanese) but we got along ok.  It was fascinating watching her deal with the differences in culture/manners/norms between here and what I observed in Tokyo.  Public spitting is pretty common here and at one point a woman next to her hocked a big one.  The Japanese woman literally cringed in return and I couldn’t help but chuckle.  Tokyo is such a clean place and spitting is not OK there.  Even for smoking, there are specific areas where you are allowed to smoke on the street but most of the time it’s not OK.  Tokyo is even more crowded than Shanghai, but people don’t bump into each other even though they have virtually no space.  Here, reaching over your head, right next to your face, or anywhere else to take a picture is OK, as is using your body to bump into someone else’s so that you have the space you want.  I started swinging my pony tail around a lot today as if the cameras and hands were horseflies and sometimes (but not always) the people nearby got the picture and gave me more space.

At the very far end of the panda park, there were a few “laowei” (foreigner) pandas. I thought it was funny that they had a giant sign calling out that these pandas were born abroad but also interesting that they had brought them back to China.  

There are less than 2000 pandas across the globe and they are having some challenges with inbreeding so I guess it makes sense to move the pandas to improve the genetic diversity.  That said, there was also a video I watched about how distressing it can be for pandas to make the journey from the US to China so I hoped they had moved them for a good reason.

Between Friday and Saturday, I had a chance to pick up a little bit of panda knowledge related to the conservation and breeding efforts of these locations.  Some of what I learned was really cool and totally unexpected:

·       Pandas can give birth after 11 weeks, or 11 months with no difference in baby health

·       Female pandas of reproductive age are only in heat once a year, and only for 3 days so there is only a small window during which they can get pregnant

·       It’s nearly impossible to know if a panda is pregnant.  A non-pregnant panda can have the same hormone profile as a panda that is pregnant and so often the pandakeepers don’t know who is pregnant until right before they give birth

·       Female pandas lick their vaginas as they are giving birth.  I don’t know how many animals are that flexible!

·       Panda conservationists are really excited that they have figured out how to freeze sperm for later use, as it allows them so ship the sperm around the globe without shipping the pandas

After about 3 hours with the pandas I was ready for something new.  I had picked this location for panda viewing because I read that there were also some trails nearby but didn’t know how to get to them.  I saw on the map inside the panda base that there was a trail along the river, but when I tried to find it it was incredibly overgrown.  After reading plenty of warnings about being aware of snakes and wasps, I thought it was best not to try this by myself.  I had basically given up and was going to go back to the inn and have a relaxing afternoon when I saw a sign for “canyon tourist area.”  I followed the sign and then found a much bigger map that I stared at for a while trying to understand what it meant.  An employee tried to help me but we couldn’t understand each other.  Eventually I decided to just follow the other people and hope for the best.

That sign at the top says "Caution: Slippery When Wet", which is how I know I found the trail.  But I didn't see anything that looked like a trail, even from the first step.

I ended up on a 7 kilometer trail that led down one gorge and up another.  The Bifeng Gorge area is actually two gorges in a V-shaped pattern, which makes for an interesting walk.  There were beautiful waterfalls throughout and the sound of running water was very relaxing.  Similar to Zhangjiajie, there were men offering rides in sedan chairs to lazy tourists and plenty of places where locals were selling food, drink, and souvenirs along the way.  It reminded me a tiny bit of Multnomah Falls in Oregon because of how close we were to the water and how many scenic spots there were. 

Here, as always, the people-watching was as memorable as the surroundings, if not more so.  Over my 5 months in China, I have seen many women hiking in dresses or skirts rather than pants/shorts.  I can understand that as a difference in terms of what is culturally appropriate for women to wear.  But what really gets me is the shoes some women shoes to wear, including high heels!  Now, it is a walk and not a hike, and the whole thing was paved with stepping stones, but still!  7 kilometers in high heels!  There were also some good examples of terrible English t-shirts.  There were tons of signs throughout the trail warning people not to enter the stream, not to leave the trail, and that the rocks get slippery when they are wet.  All these things are true, but I think the way guests are constantly reminded of them is evidence of how new outdoor activity is in this culture.  The signs reminding people to take good care of nature were moderately followed, with some guests putting their trash in the many trash cans but a not insignificant amount of trash in the streams and along the side of the path.  Also, at one point I tried to find normal potato chips and could only find weird flavors, like “Numb & Spicy Hot Pot” or “Italian Red Meat.”

"Dotcom is ery essence of a noble soul"

After about 2 hours down and up the gorge, I caught a sightseeing bus the last 3 kilometers back to the panda base and walked to my inn. I checked into my new room and was pleasantly surprised.  It is actually the room the Japanese woman had stayed in the night before and she said it wasn’t very nice, further making me regret my decision to switch inns.  But her standards and mine must be different because I was very happy I switched.  The floor is tile and not carpet and the bathroom is much more normal, although it still has the setup where there is no separate shower area – you just shower basically on top of the toilet and sink.  The room has a balcony and I spent an hour reading outside this afternoon before taking a nap.  Simon always makes fun of me for not leaving enough time for relaxation during my adventures but this felt like a great combination of both.  After dinner with the Chinese teenagers and hearing about their day volunteering at the panda base, I came back up to write more of my blog, watch some episodes of TV I had downloaded to my phone, and prepare for day 3…