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…

On the Edge of the (Chinese) World

If you haven’t noticed already, when I plan adventures I tend to pick an already somewhat crazy destination/activity and then pick an extreme version.  For instance, it wasn’t enough to just go see elephants in Thailand or Laos.  I picked the option that involved manual labor – dehusking rice and “helping” the elephants take a mudbath.

So, obviously, when it came time to visit the Great Wall, the normal tourist way wouldn’t work for me.  I didn’t want to go to the most popular part of the wall, where 99% of tourists go.  I don’t like crowds in general and crowds in China can be especially overwhelming for me.  Simon and I considered signing up for the Great Wall Marathon in May, but pictures we saw from the event showed absolutely miserable participants.  (Plus it was CRAZY expensive for foreigners.  They make you sign up for a whole week trip in Beijing, whether you want to or not!)

I learned about camping on the Great Wall from a “nature inChina” blog I found back in March.  When I spoke with another expat working in Shanghai at Nike, she said she had done it with a tour company and highly recommended it.  So 10 days ago, I signed up to camp on the Great Wall this weekend. I purchased roundtrip train tickets and my adventure was set!

My trip started at 8p on Friday night, when I boarded an overnight train in Shanghai and met my cabinmates for the evening.  There was an older Shanghaiese couple and a well-educated, professional woman who is originally from Beijing but has lived in Shanghai for many years.  The older couple went to bed almost immediately and I stayed up for a few hours getting work done and watching an episode of TV on my laptop.  Around midnight I closed my eyes and when I woke up it was light again outside the train. 

My "hotel" room for the evening. I had a top bunk but it was surprisingly comfortable

Before the train arrived in Beijing, the older couple asked me a few questions about myself and thankfully the other woman helped translate.  The couple was speaking Shanghaiese, so even if I did know Mandarin I still wouldn’t have understood them.  A couple times I tried to guess what they were asking me and I usually got it wrong.  It made me wish Simon was there, because I have been so impressed with his ability to connect with locals in situations like this where they can’t really communicate with each other.  The older couple had a chuckle when they learned I worked for Nike and then noticed that literally everything I was wearing was Nike.  I said “uniform”, and they seemed to get that and think it was funny.  The other woman and I realized we were also on the same train back to Shanghai and exchanged contact info in case we’d run into each other again.

The train arrived in Beijing at 8a and from there I took two metro lines to get to the meeting point for the hike.  My first impression of Beijing was that it was much less developed/less Western than Shanghai, but I was only seeing a small sliver of the city.  I stopped in to a western coffee shop to get on WiFi for a few minutes, buy some cold water (it was already over 90 degrees), and use the restroom.  Then I met up with the hiking group and away we went.

I slept for almost all of the 2.5-hour drive to the parking lot.  The restless sleep I had gotten the night before was catching up with me and I needed my energy to climb the wall.  During the moments I was awake, I started to notice hills that turned into mountains, and every once in a while a line on the mountain that ended up being a stretch of the great wall.  I felt like the mountains were calling to me (being a Vermonter) and was so glad that I was going to get to spend some time in them. 

See the wall all the way on top of the mountain?

After parking the car, the trip leaders distributed our backpacks, each with a tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping mat for spending the night on the wall.  I was really nervous that my bag was not going to fit well but it ended up being pretty comfortable and pretty light.  After putting my clothes and toiletries in the pack, I strapped it on my back and away we went through a nice looking gate whose words I couldn’t read (surprise surprise).

Artsy shadow pic of my and my backpack

The guide had warned us that it was a steep, steady climb up to the wall and he wasn’t kidding!  Between the nearly 100 degree heat, the strong sun, the humidity, and air pollution it was a challenging hike.  Plus there were many places where the brush had overgrown the trail, leading to many scratches and stinging nettle-type situations.  Like all trails I’ve been on in China, this one was paved although with less permanent materials than the trails in Zhangjiajie.  The good news was that everyone else on the trip was really fun to talk to and it helped distract me from the effort I was putting in.  I felt very at home on a hiking trail and found I had a lot of things in common with my tripmates.  Some were from Iowa, others loved craft beer, and still others had found a way to out-do my adventurousness, having just arrived in Beijing on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow! It was such an unexpected and wonderful feeling to have that sense of instant connection with people I’d only met minutes before.

Which way is the trail?

Each time we took a break, I looked up and could tell the wall was getting closer and closer.  Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, we made it to the first watchtower and took a nice long rest.  The views from the top were stunning.  I guess I never paid much attention to pictures of the great wall but I had no idea how winding it was.  The mountainous landscape required the architects to make the wall zig and zag so that it would be an effective defense against the potential Mongol invaders.  Sometimes it curved so much (and the valleys were so deep) that it was hard to even tell how all the pieces I could see connected together.

From the first watch tower, we started walking on top of the wall and our pace was often slowed by our guide stopping to disrupt the spider webs in our path.  We followed the wall as it dipped down into a valley and then up to the highest point of our trip.  From there we followed the wall down another ridge and eventually reached the two watchtowers that became our campsite for the night.  We arrived around 5p, drank a cold beer provided by the tour guides, set up our tents, and waited for our guides to cook dinner.

However, before that could happen, I noticed some lightening in the distance and the wind started to pick up.  Our views of the other peaks nearby started to be obscured and there was just that feeling in the air that a storm was coming.  (Plus I had checked the weather the day before and it said there was a 70% chance of rain that evening).  Thankfully our tents were set up, so we just crowded into the watchtower and made good on its name – watching the storm roll in.  I love storms and couldn’t have asked for a more memorable way to spend an hour on the great wall.  And, I didn’t worry about getting struck by lightning in the watchtower given that it was built 500 years ago with no metal.

It took about an hour for the storm to roll through and by then we were all very hungry.  Our guides converted some stones from the wall into a fire pit and started cooking up a stirfry-type dinner from cabbage, onions, and eggs.  After dinner I was the second person to bed, but the rest were not far behind.  We were supposed to have s’mores but the guides couldn’t find the marshmallows.  Nevertheless, it was a chance for intercultural sharing as some of the Europeans on the trip had never heard of this and the Americans educated them about how to make one and how good it tasted. I also learned a new recipe I am eager to try: replace the bar of chocolate with a Reeses peanut butter cup!

Pretty impressive way to hide the fire pit the morning after. You can see some white ash on the left side if you look close

This morning, I woke up on the great wall!  The mountains were stunning and the sky was blue.  We packed up our bags and hiked away from the wall on a side trail leading to a second parking lot where our van was parked.  We then drove to a “farm house” (like a country restaurant for day-trippers) and ate a local style breakfast.  From there, the group split in two, with some going to a second part of the wall and some, like me, headed back to Beijing in order to catch our planes or trains tonight or tomorrow morning.

Once we arrived in Beijing we all said goodbye and went our separate ways.  I offered everyone our spare bedroom in Portland if they ever want to come visit and I hope I will see my tripmates again!  I used one of my new friends’ itinerary and picked 2 spots to visit during the 6 hours before my train: the National Musuem of China and the Temple of Heaven.

The National Museum was very large and unfortunately the English audio guides weren’t working so there wasn’t much I could understand as 95% of the signage was in Mandarin.  However, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibit (covering China’s rise from the 1850s to today) had slightly more English in it and was fascinating to see how China tells its own history.  In particular, it reminded me of the Propaganda Poster Museum Simon and I went to in Shanghai, where we learned that sometimes pieces of art were redrawn with a person added or removed depending on how their political fortunes changed.  This painting was a key piece of the exhibit, and I found myself wondering if it was the original or a modified version to match with today’s version of yesterday’s history.

Check out the very bottom.  What exactly is a "moderately prosperous" society and why is "moderate" prosperity the goal?

The Temple of Heaven was many of my hiking friends’ favorite tourist spot in Beijing so it was my second stop before the train home.  I initially shied away from it because I thought it was just a big public park but everyone loved it and it was close to the train station so I figured I’d check it out.  The audio guide WAS available for this one so I had a semi-narrated tour during my 2 hour visit.  Religion in China is something I still don’t really understand because I’ve heard so many contradictory things.  On the one hand, I hear “religion is banned”, but then I visit temples in Shanghai and there are people there worshipping.  My colleagues told me there are gods, but they aren’t religious gods and I can’t seem to puzzle through that one.  People on my trip said they learned that religion is a no-no here because the government wants Chinese citizens to feel that the government has supreme authority, not any higher powers.  I know that there is a United Church of Christ church in Shanghai and you can only go if you have a foreign passport.

All of these contradictions made my visit to the Temple of Heaven even more interesting. It’s a very large compound of buildings all related to religious rituals that Chinese emperors from the 1500s to 1700s practiced, involving periods of fasting, animal sacrifice, and lots of prayer.  I noticed that usually the audio guide talked about prayer to “heaven” rather than prayer to “gods”.  And there was one moment where the guide talked about how the ruling class used to say that a certain spot had special powers because the speaker’s voice would be amplified but that that was just a way for the ruling class to hold onto its power and that it was really just a matter of physics.  It’s ironic, because there are many things the government does today to keep control of power, but today’s government likes pointing out when yesterday’s government was choosing a certain version of the truth for its own benefit.

Throughout the Temple of Heaven, there were many local and foreign tourists there for the first time.  However, there was another set of folks for whom the Temple of Heaven was more like a public park than a historical site.  There were many older adults playing card games and some other types of games I didn’t recognize.  The Temple of Heaven area was very quiet, not nearly as crowded as I might have expected, and I can imagine I’d go almost every weekend if I lived in Beijing instead of Shanghai.

But it was time to get back to Shanghai and my feet were tired from 16 miles of walking. So I hopped on the subway, recharged my phone and laptop at a Starbucks, and waited for my 5 hour train to Shanghai to board.  As I got to my seat, I was amazed to find the nice woman from Friday night who I shared a train compartment with.  In a country of one billion people, it was an amazing coincidence to meet someone, remember them, and then see them again 48 hours later.  As I write this, my train is going 307 kilometers per hour and I’ve got about 30 minutes left on the train ride.  I’m excited to fall asleep in what I’ve come to know as my own bed, after a night on a train and a night on the great wall. And so glad that my sense of adventure led me to yet another new place I never knew I’d get to.

12 time zones away: Maine and China

It's great, but not necessarily easy being back in America. I find myself incredibly sensitive to the white noise of conversations happening around me, having been away I feel like I've missed out on a lot, and now Katy is back in China. Just because I'm back doesn't mean there's peace and quiet though. Since coming home I've been to Adirondacks State Park, Boston, Acadia National Park, a wedding in Maine and of course the city.

Katy and I climbed short mountains in Acadia National Park

My travel-crazy wife Katy jumped 12 time zones, twice, in 10 days. When I went back and forth from China to the US in May I at least had about a month to adjust before making the trip back. Katy did it in under two weeks and managed to do so without being TOO jet-lagged on either end. It was great to see her stateside but now we're long distance again. I am incredibly thankful that we have cell phones and international SIM cards, but if one of us doesn't wake up in time (usually me) or goes to bed too early (usually Katy) then we don't get to talk to each other for another twelve hours. That makes me feel like we are on the other side of the world from one another which, of course, we are.

My jet-lagged wife tired at a wedding

When talking to someone 12 hours away is that you're either saying good night when you're waking up, or good morning as you're falling asleep. It's not always a different day of the week, but half of the time it is. It feels like an exercise in empathy, because I'm always forced to imagine what type of day/experience Katy is currently having. Whether she's tired, hungry, excited or just waking up and drowsy, basically I have to guess/figure out where she's coming from every time we talk. This is probably good practice for married life, but is definitely challenging. Now that I'm back, I also have to re-understand intellectually the difficulties Katy might still having living abroad because I already feel removed from them. I feel like I've come back from China and left the experience behind me. If I was tired from being in China, I'm refreshed. While I know Shanghai is still there, it is very much out of sight and out of mind (except when I talk to Katy).

The New York skyline from Brooklyn Heights promenade

I do feel like my repatriation process is going well, being in familiar places (home), with familiar people (friends and family), and doing regular summer activities makes me feel as grounded and stable as I have in over a year. Buying a New York Times and a real bagel while walking the streets of the Big Apple had a profoundly de-stressing effect on my body. I could feel the calm wash over me and knew it was caused by the smell of the fresh bagel and feel of the newsprint, real sensations of home, comfort and familiarity.

I'm pretty sure that's a bat box atop the street light on Manhattan's West Side bike path

Of course I am definitely looking forward to being back in our home in the Pacific Northwest, but the East Coast is a great place to re-acclimate to this clean and democratic air in America. While the days are long and the ocean water is warm I'll be hanging out with my family by the beach before heading back to Oregon in time for Total Solar Eclipse 2017. If you have the chance to watch it do so: we won't get another one in America until 2045. Happy summertime everyone!

Back from (not) Studying abroad in Shanghai

Buddhist shrine in Zhangjiajie National Park: home of the Avatar mountains

I didn't make it back to the good ol' U. S. of A. until after July 4th, but it was still nice landing back on native soil. Landing in Newark Airport was nice, I had a window seat and saw Metlife Stadium (where the Giants play) from a very cool angle. Then ate my momma's cooking - which is always the best - and saw a few friends. The best part of being home in NYC was the walking. I had spent a lot of time walking around Shanghai, exploring or just walking in the park for exercise, but walking around New York felt different, different even from how I had remembered it. First off the streets felt somewhat empty. They may have felt empty because it was still a holiday week, but I think they just felt empty compared to the bustling streets of Shanghai. Secondly was that I always knew where I was; it's a big city but I've been all around it and very few places in the city feel foreign to me. Most enjoyable though, was the diversity. The racial, religious and cultural diversity of New York City is something I used to take for granted when I was young. As I went away to college and spent time living in Boston I realized that diversity of cultures was part of my education growing up: meeting people from different walks of life, different countries and different social outlooks is great, and being back in New York was great for that reason.

Unrelated but a dragonfly alit on my father's shoulder walking around NYC

After a few days in NYC with my family, I set off on the beginning of my last leg of our summer adventures. I was solo, Katy was still working in Shanghai, so I picked up a rental car in Connecticut en route to the Adirondacks in upstate New York. There I stopped by a local butcher shop on the way to meet up with a great friend, then spent two days hiking, kayaking and eating great, local, fresh, American food. It was a great way to reset the body from urban life and convene with nature (as well as familiar food). Oh, and I used Google Maps to direct me the entire time I was driving, even though I pretty much knew where I was going, because it was a way of expressing my freedom. You may remember I mentioned how Google is off-limits in China. For no other reason than to appreciate Google better, I recommend spending some time in China.

           

From the Adirondacks I drove to Boston and stayed with a different friend. As I continued to acclimate to America, it was nice to have a chance to talk to someone about my experience who understood. Mike spent five years living and working in Asia after college and he helped me decompress some of the feelings I had, as well as help me realize some feelings I hadn't even realized I had been experiencing. It's not that life was hard in Shanghai, if anything I had more free time than I ever have had before, but it was socially isolating. Being Caucasian in Asia definitely comes with white privilege that I didn't expect, but I also felt like an outsider regularly. The Chinese word for Caucasians is "laowai" which roughly translates to "foreigner." As an identifiable foreigner no one expected me to speak Mandarin, which was nice because I never learned, but I also realized how I stood out of any crowd (the long hair didn't help). Basically the hardest thing was the over-stimulation and lack of predictable interactions. Little things bothered me: they don't say anything when you sneeze in China. It always seemed weird that no one ever said "excuse me," when they burped, or "bless you" when someone else sneezed. It's just not a part of their culture, but it made me reconsider our cultural norms.

The Bud Light of China

Now I'm back in America for good, but Katy still has another six weeks in Shanghai for work. She's jet-lagged pretty bad right now (and likely will be until even after she gets back) but I'm mostly on the right sleep schedule. It's probably not quite the same as acclimating to altitude, but after a week and a half I still t feel like my body is giving me bad clues. I heard somewhere, albeit it not from a scientist, that it takes one day per time zone that you change. Considering I was 12 time zones away I guess it makes sense that I'm not quite acclimated to the time here yet. Adjusting to the sun is probably not as big a deal as I expected it to be, while switching cultures is probably a bigger deal than I expected it to be. While I haven't had any perceived issues with Western culture, occasionally when I'm out walking on a busy street I feel overwhelmed by the number of conversations I overhear. Shortly before we left Katy and I had our anniversary dinner at a restaurant but were surrounded by English-speakers. It was terribly distracting for both of us, as we had gotten used to only hearing Mandarin spoken in public places. It's easy to ignore the conversations around you if you can't even understand the sounds people are using as words. Now there's a cacophony of sounds I recognize and I'm still getting used to it.

Being back with an appreciation of the other side of the world, their culture, social behaviors and mannerisms, is profoundly more rewarding than I ever thought it would be. When I studied abroad in Stockholm, Sweden in 2008 I was fortunate enough to visit almost a dozen European countries and soak in their culture. All over Europe I was surprised by the juxtaposition of English fluency and deep-seeded sense of tradition, culture and nationalism. Now that I'm back from China, I am starting to view America through a different, but equally eye-opening, lens. Shanghaiese people seemed to embrace Western luxuries while eschewing many Western principles. To be fair, I didn't get to wander the Chinese countryside by bicycle (as one of my few Chinese friends professed a love for) but I did get to spend a lot of time closely examining how urban Shanghai operates. Over 80 percent of Americans live in cities and 50 percent of Chinese live in cities. The urban organization and efficiency of Shanghai was overwhelmingly impressive. While New York City is efficient, it's nothing compared to Shanghai.

While almost all of Chinese culture is significantly older than American culture, often thousands of years older, New York City has had a Western influence for over 200 years before Shanghai ever did (1624 vs. the 1860s). The number of building cranes in Shanghai is overwhelming. Construction continues at an unabated pace that seems unsustainable, while also highly organized and efficient. While I heard about the ghost cities of China, I didn't get a chance to visit any. These cities were built in anticipation of a workforce that never materialized in the area. As such there are fully built cities that are capable of holding millions of people that are barely even populated. Under our capitalist decentralized system of government and resource allocation, a ghost city could never materialize in America the same way they have in China. However, the rigid urban planning, use of eminent domain, and ability to rapidly adapt is only possible in China's top down system of political, social and monetary organization. Being back now it's hard to say which is better - although it was/is interesting to observe and speculate about what public works programs would be possible in either system. A quick example is that Shanghai has built almost 400 subway stations since 1993, while New York City started building in 1900 and have just under 500 subway stations. While it's possible, I find it highly unlikely that New York City could have developed an additional 400 subway stations in the past 25 years even if there had been demand for it. Quick example: in NYC the 2nd Avenue subway just opened this year, 2017, but began construction in 1919.

While I'm thankful for the experience I've had, I'm also thankful to be home. It's kind of nice that I ended my time in Shanghai and jumped right into summer vacation. While it's been awhile since I've been in school, this seemed like an adult semester abroad for me and I expect I'll be a better person for it. I'm currently in Maine for a week with my in-laws, and then headed to a wedding. After which Katy will return to Shanghai to finish her work and I will still be on summer vacation (lucky me!). There isn't a whole lot I would change about my experience in Shanghai, but considering how much the time has impacted me, I feel lucky I had the chance to spend as much time as I did living and traveling in Asia. Just like studying abroad was a once in a lifetime chance, so was the time we spent in Shanghai. That being said, I am greatly looking forward to working the wine harvest season back in Oregon, planting some stuff in our garden, and making friends for life.

G-d bless America

Local Shanghaiese (feed cats in parks)

I didn't think I would feel the need to spend my last 24 hours in Shanghai doing the rounds and saying goodbye to the people and places I got to know while I was here. As a New Yorker who grew up in Manhattan, I took for granted the routines I developed. I used to buy a bagel with butter at the bodega on my block on my way to school. I did it so regularly that they used to have it sitting by the register ready for me every morning, and would let me cut the line to pay; the candy store owner always knew I wanted Twix; the guy at Subway had my sandwich memorized. I was a creature of habit, but I never quite knew what to make of these relationships. They were little parts of my life, just business as usual, and yet I still look back on them fondly. The last thing I ever expected was to develop similar habits in China.

A view from our 32nd Story apartment window

Being in Shanghai has been tough. At first it was tough because I was comparing everything I experienced to a New York equivalent - or at least I was trying to understand Shanghai in terms of New York. Then I went to New York a few weeks ago and when I came back to Shanghai I realized it's just a different place. It is also a bustling city with fashion and tourism like New York: our neighborhood in Shanghai feels in many ways like the ritziest parts of Manhattan. Busy, bustling streets filled with tourists and shoppers, side streets dominated by locals, and the occasional park where people get a respite from the hustle and bustle. Other than the language and demographics what could be different?

Just some guys moving stuff around Shanghai by scooter, no big deal

Most people don't know but I spent two college summers working as a doorman on Park Avenue in New York City. For no other reason than that, I never wanted to live in a building with a doorman. Being a New Yorker, being class sensitive, and frankly just not enjoying the interaction, I purposely avoided living as so until now. There was no choice when we came to Shanghai, there were very few housing options and they all involved doormen. It has felt a little like a hotel to me with a concierge, athletic facilities and restaurant (have I mentioned we literally live above a mall!), but I have gotten friendly with a few of the doormen here. There are two in particular who I always share a big smile with. Maybe it's my long hair, relaxed attitude, or the occasional commiserating eye roll that they appreciate. Either way, it's been surprising that I could get used to a situation I had spent a long time avoiding: I guess Shanghai has changed me a little.

A scale model of Shanghai at the Urban Planning Museum

Katy and I have visited, and previously wrote about, a bottle shop called "Much Beer" here in Shanghai. It is located on a quiet street that doesn't get much foot traffic and is filled with beautiful trees and a seemingly authentic Shanghaiese feel. Scooters are parked on the sidewalk, the elderly sit on folding chairs on the curb, occasionally kids can be seen playing down alleyways, in short neighbors seem to be intertwined in each others' lives. Much Beer is a store that sells brews from back home and plays poppy American music on the radio. The shopkeeper quickly remembered me and over the course of a dozen or so visits we exchanged many communications via Baidu translate. I told him he had a beautiful shop, he told me about his favorite beers, and we shared snippets of information about each other. One time I went in to buy Katy a six-pack of her favorite beer. He wasn't working, but when I saw him next I told him about my past visit and he said he had suspected that I was the one who had bought the six pack. I never had the heart to tell him that he had a misspelling on his front door, which featured various "Ales and Largers".

Bathroom artwork at the bottle shop named: "Much Beer"

Down the street from Much Beer is a store called Flower Talk. I would often stop in after visiting Much Beer and buy Katy an assorted bouquet of flowers. While American IPAs aren't cheap, the flowers certainly are. There I quickly became friendly with the husband and wife owners. The novelty of seeing a laowai (similar to gringo) may have scared off some shopkeepers, but not this one. He spoke English on a better level than my Spanish, although he constantly apologized for not remembering more of his high school English. We communicated well and had some nice conversations, sometimes with the assistance of Baidu translate but often through his mental sweat and my confirmations. When I told him today that I was leaving Shanghai, he refused to let me pay for the flowers I was trying to purchase. To me it was an obscenely generous gesture and I tried to refuse it. Many shopkeepers in Shanghai live in the backroom or above the shop where they sell. At Flower Talk, however, only a curtain separates the living space from the business space. I tried my best to express gratitude and told him I hope we see each other again some day.

Some random art I liked

The air quality in Shanghai is bad. Not as bad as Beijing, but so bad that I can tell just by breathing when the air quality is better or worse. Katy and I regularly marvel at the few joggers we see puttering past. We have to remind ourselves that it's impossible for them to become runners, it hurts the lungs and might be dangerous to their health to exercise outdoors. On the iPhone Weather App there is an extra line at the bottom for Air Quality Index, and sometimes it reads: "Dangerous for Sensitive Groups". So instead of my regular running, I have adopted a walking routine. Since I'm not working but crave being outdoors (as well as the runner's high), I eventually worked up to two hours a day, which is a lot of time for people watching. My favorite loop is in Fuxing Park (pronounced fu-ching, not that dirty word you were thinking). The loop in Fuxing Park is around a third of a mile so in two hours I get over 20 loops in. There are many regular walkers I see multiple times per week: one man who walks faster than me sweats through his dress shirt for over an hour each day, he doesn't like eye contact; another woman seems to live in the park, she is almost always there regardless of what time I am walking; I recognize all of the policemen and many of the people doing park maintenance, and many recognize me. At lunchtime a few hundred people come to the park to walk around, some I have seen often, but many are not regulars. The majority of regulars are also my favorite people to watch: those who come to feed the cats.

Pizza and cats

I have never seen a single mouse or rat in this park,but hardly a day goes by when I don't see multiple people snapping cell phone pics of the park cats. Katy and I recently did a long walk together in Fuxing Park and Katy counted over a dozen cats in a single lap. I suspect there are upwards of two or three dozen cats in the park total: orange cats, black cats, white cats, tabbied cats, and even a few very young cats who presumably were born in the park. We think some cats were pets that got abandoned, but for whatever reason these homeless cats seem to be quite tolerated by the city. Dogs aren't allowed in the park and I suspect it may be out of respect for the cats that make their homes there. The people who come to feed the cats on a regular basis are the most interesting subset of Shanghaiese I have encountered. Old and young, wealthy and poor, male and female, a true cross-section of the city. They bring cat food, purchased at pet stores, and seem to have particular cats that they feed. They're not just feeding random cats, I watch them look for their cats, call to them, and shoo away other cats trying to steal THEIR cats' food. Pets are rare and expensive in Shanghai so I think having a cat that you care for, that lives in a park, is a compromise many Shanghaiese are happy to make.

Peace Out Shanghai

Shanghai has many beautiful parks, many charming sights, but also a number of regular spots that I have developed routines around. I never expected to develop any sense of home when I came here, but it's weird having that feeling as I leave. As I did my last 20 laps in the park today, visited Much Beer for the last time, and spent an hour talking to my favorite florist in the world, I never expected to start to miss a place that became a temporary home. I showed up to Shanghai jaded and comparing everything and everyone to New Yorkers, but I'm leaving feeling like I had some meaningful experiences and wondering if and when I might come back to Shanghai. If I do I suspect many aspects and qualities of the city will have changed (hopefully the air pollution will have improved), but also I suspect I will still be able to go to Fuxing park and watch local Shanghaiese feed the of cats, hopefully after an American IPA at Much Beer and a trip to Flower Talk.

An Ode to Sisterhood (and a trip down under)

When my sister Emmy found out that I was headed to China for six months, she suggested we meet up in Australia for a vacation together.  I like to tease her that her geography skills are clearly limited (given that Shanghai and Australia are almost 5,000 miles apart), but maybe she was just being self-aware about where in the world she did (or didn’t) want to visit.  The trip remained mostly a pipe dream for a few months last winter and then in late March we finally settled on an itinerary, purchased flights, and prepped for the big adventure.  As I mentioned in my last post, May was a challenging month for me so our trip couldn’t have come at a better time.

Boarding the Qantas flight in Shanghai after work on a Friday, it felt like I had already left China and entered a more comfortable, English-speaking world.  I met Emmy in Brisbane at the local train station and remember her asking if I could walk any slower as I dragged my way up the stairs and through the exit gate.  After an overnight flight to Sydney then a short hop to Brisbane, I was exhausted but so relieved to see someone I’ve known my whole life.  We spent the day in Brisbane going for a hike up a local mountain, something I haven’t done since I left Portland.  We also found an awesome vegan restaurant and each had different takes on a veggie burger.  Then we left the next morning for three days in the Whitsundays.

The Whitsundays were GORGEOUS and I’d definitely spend more time there if I get a chance.  The white sands of Whitehaven Beach are as picturesque as the millions of pictures taken there each year imply.  The sunset sail complete with cheese & crackers and champagne was relaxing, albeit a little slow due to lack of wind.  And the sea kayaking was picture-perfect, topped off by green sea turtle swimming just beneath our kayaking for almost a minute. 

Our trip was planned around seeing the Great Barrier Reef as much as possible – and before it all dies due to climate change – so we made sure to snorkel during our first few days.  Planning this part was more challenging than it would have been a few months ago due to Cyclone Debby, which delivered 30-hours of X-per-hour winds followed by 3 feet of rain in 24 hours.  In addition to the damage to buildings and infrastructure, it also washed immense amount of sediments into the ocean that have yet to settle out.  This reduced the snorkeling visibility significantly, meaning that the best option was to head to the outer reef for the day.

So we hopped on a boat that took us 2 hours off the coast to a set of pontoons floating near the outer reef.  It wasn’t a particularly warm day, so we put on not one but two wetsuits and then hopped in the water.  Emmy had originally planned to get scuba dive certification before the trip but I convinced her that snorkeling was fine.  This was a moment of truth for me – I was worried that she’d be wishing she were scuba diving but when she popped her head up for the first time I could tell she was perfectly content to be stuck on the surface rather than diving below.  The reef was different from what I remembered in the US Virgin Islands and was full of many fish species I’d last seen in an aquarium in China.  I didn’t see any turtles, but Emmy found one and I was glad that she had found some more “exotic” wildlife.  I spent the last few moments of the trip with a Mauri Wrasse that was almost as long as I was who didn’t seem to be bothered by how close we were getting.

The next day we were on another flight, this time headed up to Cairns.  We rented a car our first afternoon to go hiking in the Mossman Gorge and then learned about a free sailing night at the Port Douglas Yacht Club.  Again the wind was not on our side and there was no real sailing to be had, but we motored a sailboat up a coastal river looking for crocodiles.  We had our eyes glued to the riverbanks, but we couldn’t find any.  The locals amused us with stories of tourists doing dumb things with crocodiles.  But my favorite story was of a local who told a cute tourist that “crocodiles don’t bite locals.”  He jumped into a river to prove it and was promptly attacked.  I don’t know why exactly but that story stuck with me.  We drove back to Cairns in the dark with Emmy helping to remind me which side of the road to drive on… I was fine once we were on a road but I didn’t like having to make turns from one road to another.

In Cairns, we added to our lists of adrenaline rushes with a second snorkeling trip and rafting the Tully River.  While snorkeling, I saw a reef shark and was surprisingly calm about it.  It was 10 meters below me and all the tour operators had assured us many times that if we see a shark, it would be this species and they are pretty afraid of us.  I also remember someone in the Galapagos telling me that sharks only attack things three times smaller than them and this one was only slightly bigger than me.  We found new fish species as well, including one that I nicknamed the “American Flag” fish because of the way it looked like it had stars and stripes on it.

But the most memorable part of our time in Cairns was rafting the Tully.  Emmy had read about it in the guidebook and it was on our “must do” list.  A friend of mine had also done it and said it was “epic”, or something along those lines.  Given that our dad is an avid paddler in his own right, I said I’d do it even though it made me nervous just thinking about it.  According to our guide, the Tully is different than other rivers because you are supposed to intentionally hit rocks rather than avoid them.  I’m still not sure if that’s true or if she just has some paddling skills to improve; either way we did hit a lot of rocks.  Thankfully Emmy was in front and bore the brunt of all the waves that came our way.  I was in the back of the boat just in front of our guide, who thought I was a space cadet and wasn’t paying attention.  At some point she realized that I did know what I was doing and stopped chiding me so much, but I was glad Emmy was there to relieve the tension and laugh at my eye-rolls.

Overall, my trip lasted 8 days (Emmy had an extra week before I arrived) and it was some of the best sister-sister bonding we have had in years.  We were lucky enough to go on many family vacations together as kids but I can’t remember ever doing something just the two of us before this.  (And to be honest, my guess is there won’t be very many more of these trips in the near future.)

As I’ve become more immersed in Chinese culture, I continue to admire how close families are and how involved grandparents are in grandkids’ lives.  But one thing I would miss if my family lived this way is that there would be no Emmy.  Almost every family in Shanghai has only one child and despite the lifting of the One Child Policy, most Shanghai families do not plan to have more than one kid.  When I see families walking down the street, I am reminded how lucky I am to have a sister, someone who has been by side and shared my experiences since I was 3 years old.  We’ve had some pretty formative experiences, including getting stuck overnight in the Detroit Airport by ourselves when I was 12 and seeing Taylor Swift in concert in Seattle two years ago.  Although we live on opposite sides of the globe, we are probably closer now than we ever have been and I know that closeness will only continue to grow.  

So to my one and only sister (on her 25^th birthday): I love you!  Thank you for planning an amazing vacation!  See you back in the US soon!