Pictures from my trip 西安 （Xi'An) and 敦煌 (Dun Huang) and back again!

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Picture

Forgot to add one of the pictures. this is supposed to be the "third picture" as per my description below.

Fall Break Adventure

Here are 3 pictures of my trip since that is my limit for each blog post. The first picture is of my friends on the train from Xi'an to Dunhuang. Notice how the beds are arranged in sets of 6 beds with 3 beds stacked on top of one another. The second is a picture of some of friends in front of the Playboy bunny store in Dunhuang because that was hilarious. The third is some of us at the MoGao caves, which have the largest collection of Buddhist art in the world (450,000 square feet of murals).

All in all, the trip was a huge success. We left on Friday, October 2nd and flew on a plane to Xi'an (a city in China known for the Terracotta Warriors). After being in Nanjing where the cabs run on meters, we weren't used to bargaining for our cab rides and so we ended up getting completely ripped off for a cab to drive us about half a mile. After we checked into the hostel, we headed straight to the train station and were extremely relieved to find that they had train tickets to DunHuang (think Gobi Desert) on Sunday morning. Afterward, we walked around the area surrounding our hostel, talking and celebrating the fact that we were finally on the trip that took much trial and tribulation to plan. We had a delicious noodle dinner and returned to the hostel to sleep.

The next morning, Saturday, October 3rd, we found a bus to take us to HuaShan, which is one of China's Five Sacred Daoist Mountains. After a two hour bus ride, we ate lunch and were upset to find that the English menu they gave us listed the same dishes that were on the Chinese menu, except that they were more expensive on the English menu.  We spent the next hour trying to find the mountain. Finally we found the "tourist center" and we had to buy another bus ticket that would take us to the cable cars. Upon seeing the line for the cable cars, our reaction was that it was worse than Disney World. We waited in line for the cable cars for over 2 hours! Finally, we rode the cable cars up to the top of the mountain, which was over 5,000 feet high. It was magnificent and a wonderful experience to be seemingly suspended in the air. When we reached the top of the mountain, we were confronted with a huge crowd of people waiting to ride the cable cars back down. After waiting in the congestion for another 30 minutes, we discovered a way to climb up to one of the peaks of the mountain. We had to use chains on the face of the mountain to climb up. We decided we didn't want to wait another 2 hours to ride the cable cars back down, so we decided to walk down the mountain. The entire path was cement and there were extremely steep stairs all the way down. However, we moved quickly and it only took us an hour to get to the bottom.

We were exhausted when we finally returned to the hostel, and the next morning, Sunday, we began our 23 hour train ride to Dun Huang. We were only able to get tickets for the top bunks, but luckily we also made friends with the Chinese people who were sitting on the bottom bunks. They gave us food. It was awesome. We played Chinese chess, read books, chatted, looked at the Chinese countryside out the window and played video games on one of our computers. At 10:00 pm they turn all the lights out and everyone went to sleep. When we woke up the next morning and looked out the window, it seemed as though we had landed on Mars-- or a Star Wars movie set perhaps. It was Monday morning on October 5th and we had arrived in the Gobi Desert. A few hours later, we found our way to Dun Huang, checked into the hotel, and made our way to the MoGao Caves, which as I said before, have murals of Buddhist art. In one of the caves, there is a huge Buddha that is 33 meters high-- it was magnificent!

The next day, Tuesday October 6th, we relaxed and walked around exploring the small quaint town of Dun Huang. We discovered a beautiful but small park in one part of the city and we sat and enjoyed its beauty. That night we also went shopping at the Night Market, which is awesome when you're looking for souvenirs and other Dun Huang tokens. The city also had what we called a "food court" which was basically a huge pavillion with a bunch of small restaurants underneath. We also ate donkey meat and yellow noodles, which apparently Dun Huang is famous for. It was delicious! The next day was Wednesday, and we went to MingSha Shan which is home to the largest sand dunes in the world. We rode camels up to the top of one of the mountains and we bought inflatable innertubes and rode down the side of the mountain! I also rented an ATV and rode around the dunes with a guide. Afterward, we rode our camels to the Crescent Moon Spring, which is a famous lake in the middle of the sand dunes. It was a beautiful oasis!

The next day, Thursday, we chilled around Dun Huang again, played some bumper boat laser tag, and then caught a night train to Lanzhou. The next morning we arrived in Lanzhou, and we were nervous that we were going to get stuck in Lanzhou, but soon after we arrived, we scored train tickets to Xi'an that left about 30 minutes later. We didn't get a sleeper train, but it was only 10 hours (yay!) so we played cards and played Chinese chess to let the time pass by. Finally, we arrived back in Xi'an the evening of Friday, October 9th. On Saturday morning we saw the Terra Cotta warriors, which were of course amazing and fascinating. On Saturday, we caught a train back to Nanjing. We were only able to get a slow train so it took us 19 hours to get back to Nanjing. We arrived this morning, Sunday October 11, around 2:00 pm. We totaled over 66 hours on a train but it was great fun! Actually, getting to talk to all the Chinese people on the train, as you are often forced to do when you're sleeping across from a total stranger, was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The friendliness and hospitality of the Chinese people is most apparent on the trains, where they will give you food (always a plus) and let you sit on their bed. They are also very curious, always asking where you are from and why you are in China.

This trip made me want to travel even more! 

Happy Birthday, Megan!

Megan, I know you're birthday isn't until October 4th, but I wanted to write you a happy birthday post now. 

We don't have class next week in celebration of National Day and the Moon Festival so I'm going on a trip for 10 days with my friends to Xi'an and Dunhuang. As such, I'll be out of touch and won't be able to post much until October 11th. 

Anyway, this post is a tribute to one of my best friends, Megan, who is a beautiful person and I miss her a lot!! Thanks for always being there for me, Megan, and I hope you have an amazing 21st birthday. You've always hated being the oldest, but now you're the lucky one! I hope you have a great birthday! I wish I could celebrate with you this year but I'll be there in spirit. :-) 

Things that I always wondered about

You know how Americans always get tattoos of Chinese characters that are often written wrong, upside down or don't have an appropriate or logical meaning? Well in case anybody was wondering, Chinese people wear shirts and have other paraphernalia that has bad English on it. Women's dress shirts and club/going out shirts are the most common. A common pattern is big block letters arranged vertically on the shirt saying, for example, "ORANGE PEARL BRIDGE MUSIC." Also my pencil case says, "Keep a good mood!" which does indeed keep me smiling during Chinese class!

Yes, Chinese babies do poop and pee on the street, even in Shanghai.

No, Chinese people do not eat dog meat. At least not that I know of... Dogs are pretty common household pets.

Chinese women want white skin so much that they walk around with umbrellas on sunny days. I thought that they did this to keep cool, but apparently not according to the Chinese roommates on campus... And even L'Oreal and Clinique have numerous advertisements for skin whitening cream.

If there is a holiday during the week, everyone goes to school and to work on Sunday. National Day (think 4th of July) is on this Thursday and so my whole family went to school and work yesterday (Sunday). One of my Chinese teachers even went to campus because she thought we had class and no one told her otherwise. We probably should have had class, but CIEE probably figures that if they ever made Americans go to school on Sunday, we'd be up in arms.

Tai chi is a wrong transliteration from Chinese. It's actually called Tai Ji Quan, which literally means shadow boxing. I'm currently taking a Tai Ji class every Monday and Wednesday for an hour and I have to give props to my parents who have been doing Tai Chi/Tai Ji for years now. It's fun but challenging!! at least for me, the world's most uncoordinated person. I've included a picture of my friend Kira during class last week.

Thanks for reading!! Since I can't see the blog anymore (sad face), email me if you are wondering if any other stereotypes about Chinese people are true or false. my email is stynen@gwmail.gwu.edu.

DISCLAIMER: yes, China is an extremely diverse country and saying a generalization about China is like trying to generalize Americans: it's impossible and can never be true all the time. these claims are from my observations around Nanjing.

中文太难了！（Chinese is too hard!)

I take back all my sympathy for people learning English. Chinese is officially the hardest language in the world.

Ok, I am exaggerating and there are aspects of English that definitely make is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. However, I am experiencing major frustrations with Chinese. I've been in China for over 4 weeks now, and I'm dissappointed that I'm not more conversant. I'm struggling to make the jump from everyday conversation to more meaningful things.

Also there was a major setback on the Internet proxy front. It turns out that that the proxy that all my friends and I have been using has somehow been shut down by the government. I'll let you know when I can view my blog and Facebook again. We really thought we had outsmarted them this time but apparently not.

This afternoon, my ayi told me that we were eating 螃蟹 for dinner. I didn't know what that was, so she offered to show me. She took me into the kitchen and lifted up a cutting board on the sink to reveal 8 crabs running around. It was then that I realized that I am officially afraid of crabs. Later, my didi brought me into the kitchen and pointed to one of the big pots they have. I could hear the crabs running around inside the pot, and I could look through its glass lid and watch them being steamed to death! I know this is common in the US, but I'd never seen it before and it was so crazy/scary/strange/I don't even know what. Then we ate the crabs, which I've never done before, and I semi-succeeded, but my ayi still had to give me the crab leg meat like a 2 year old. haha. It was a new experience for me.