Phuket at last

I've been in Phuket now for almost two weeks... but it feels like it's been longer! I don't have much time to write (at work now) but suffice it to say it's been more or less paradise at a buck's price. The Kamala King's School has been (in)conveniently canceled for this week, so Chris and I have been working on some themed plans for a weekday camp for the residential kids. We've visited Phi Phi Island twice now, and stayed in Railay Beach, and otherwise hanging around in luxurious pools that belong to luxurious resorts (in which we don't have the money to stay) and sipping away at the swim-up bars, watching every sunset in our usual terraced restaurant with huge bay windows, and visiting nearby (crazy) Patong Beach every once in a while. Kamala is absolutely amazing (see beach above) and just quiet enough that you don't feel like you're back in Europe/America with so many tourists elsewhere (see Phi Phi.. meh). Anywho, back to work now. Just keeping this thing updated. (Quite hard when every moment is precious here!) I'd say I miss home, but who could when the sand is this white, the food this delicious, and everything this cheap!

Bangkok!

I have just arrived in Bangkok, and now patiently (OK, more than extremely eagerly) await Chris's arrival tonight. The hotel (or resort as they call it, though it rather resembles a really well kept motel since it has at most 50 rooms) is quite convenient at a 10 minute drive from the international airport, and the staff are really quite fluent in English and all smiles. The only downside is the monsoon season that is so readily apparent as I sit with the wind blowing hard from the door and pouring rain. I wish the usual monsoon summer rains would be less frequent than the everyday occurrence that they are famed to be. Oh, and of course mosquitoes are rampant here, and as I write I am being eaten alive! My grandma used to always say my blood was so sweet that I always found the attention of every mosquito near me. Not sure that's such a great thing, more of a back-handed compliment I'd say. Well, I am off to take a nap. Safe and alive in Bangkok and off to gorgeous Phuket tomorrow morning!

Disaster: American Girl's Attempted Entry to China (Failed) & Quarantine in Hong Kong

Sooooo... I love Hong Kong. I'd describe it as a very British New York Chinatown completely slammed with Chinese people all speaking Cantonese (and decent English). Especially if you are in the subway, it is just like London's Tube filled with Asian heads bobbing around. But I supposed I digress....

Yesterday I tried to return to Shenzhen from Hong Kong after two days with my dad sightseeing and (a lot of) shopping in HK. Too bad the hotel we stayed in had a 13th floor which we happened to live on-- I'd like to blame it on sheer bad luck rather than our own negligence-- because apparently my Chinese visa (remember how I got my American citizenship and after so much celebrating can't enter China..) had only one entry time on it, which I used up coming into Shanghai from America. Thus we were quarantined at the Shenzhen harbour waiting for the next boat to HK (which consumed 8 hours of the day filled with a lot of anxiety, stress, tears, and mostly just regret that I wouldn't be able to return to Hefei to say a proper farewell to my grandparents). We opted not to wait the requisite 4 days to rush another $150 visa to China, and so now I am flying out to Thailand tomorrow from Hong Kong. My luggage luckily made it from Hefei (thanks to Daddy's business connections) to here, and now packing is going to consumer this whole day (well, and probably more shopping, you know me). It works out quite well considering how large of a blunder it was to try to enter China without the necessary documentation. (Lucky I didn't get sent to jail, right? I even thought about swimming to China's border, but alas, the police held my passport while we were quarantined to prevent such a ridiculous move.) I just find it amazingly ironic that while I held a Chinese passport for the last 11 years, I always met trouble crossing any border (and I did cross a lot of borders in that time), but now, my American passport gives me trouble entering what I'd like to call my motherland. I suppose the Olympics did cause so much stricter guidelines on entering China. Now I am only 2 hours late in arriving at BKK International Airport, but still 7 hours ahead of my travel partner. :) Well, I'm off to more preparation-- I do believe I bought too many things in Hong Kong to stuff into my giant backpack and even another suitcase.... I'll write once I have more time in Thailand!

黄山: "Yellow Mountain" - China's granite beauty

I am back from Guilin already (last night) and after a more relaxing day in Hefei (went to see Grandparents' new highrise apartment, the huge French supermarket next door that sells more fresh produce and animals than you can imagine, and the house I grew up in which is smaller than a quarter of the size of my apartment now), I have realized that I have a lotta catching up to do blogwise.

So here goes my attempt at Huangshan.
This is the main gate reading Huangshan on top, which translates to "yellow mountain." It is really a series of mountains in a range. We took a cable car in the morning to one peak, called White Goose Peak. From the ride alone you could already see the "sea of fog" that awards Huangshan its fame.At the top of White Goose, the stretch of clouds and fog look like the stretch of clouds and fog look like an ocean of cotton balls that were more comfortable than any bed... except for the thousands of feet you'd tumble if you were to try.Particular to the mountain range are Huangshan pine trees, which grow only on the steep slopes of the mountains fully upright and with dispersed branches-- a quite oriental look if I may say. Along the concrete steps which break the foliage of these pines you encounter these amazing workers who carry bags of concrete on bamboo shoots for further building, stopping every few steps for respite from the weight; I can't imagine how heavy those bags are. Their calves are huge! Chinese work ethic will never cease to amaze me sometimes.
Chinese culture incessantly necessitates poetic names (unfortunately the poetic aspect is lost in translation) for odd-looking things-- Huangshan in particular has names for endless pine trees or stones. Here is "Monkey Guarding the Sea of Fog":
And this particular stone is humongous, but the way the weathering of the mountains have coincidentally shaped it, it looks like some god had set it atop this peak. "Flying-over Stone":

Can you see the ants that are really people at the rock?Engraved on this giant rock are letters which bring good luck if you touch them and leave some money....
See, it's huge when I hug it!

Everywhere else, the sea of fog is just incredible. You can see one mountainscape one second, and a blink later, those peaks have disappeared under the waves and new ones have appeared. The height of where we stood was always disguised by the sea, as we were really almost always a thousand meters (more than 3000 feet) above sea level-- it was as if we were in a different world where the ground became the clouds.
Still at the top, peering downwards scared my mom to death (and to screaming at me) as I like to lean over the rails to see what's below: steep, steep rocks for a terrible death if you tumbled!
The climb at times was a bit slippery (especially on the second day which was completely rainy) and steep and full of narrow paths guarded by rock walls. (But of course, that makes it fun.)

Anyhow, I realize this entry is a bit brief since I'm trying to catch up (and also pack for Shenzhen/Hong Kong simultaneously) but the pictures speak for themselves (except I really, really wish I had a big ole expensive camera to capture the beauty of Huangshan). We spent two days hiking around in the mountains... although every picture in that album might look the same to you, the aeshetic appeal never diluted with each new scene...

I will write about our trip to Guilin when I get a chance (if not, check here for pictures).... :) Otherwise, I leave for Shenzhen tomorrow morning, Hong Kong for two days after that, back to Hefei for a day, and then Bangkok and Phuket!

Predisposed to waterfalls and springs: Hefei & Huangshan's surrounding scenery

It's the little things that are most nostalgic.

Like how my grandparents' smiles slowly peak as they watch me gorge myself each meal.... Or how before my grandmother says anything, she'll preface it with "wo gen ni jiang..." ("let me tell you..."). Or how the exact intonations of oh's or ah's or uh's and ai-yah's precisely indicate disparate meanings. Or how even though my grandparents couldn't ask for more money from their daughters who've all made so well for themselves in America/Canada, they still would rather take the public bus than a taxi, or take the remaining napkins from a restaurant than buy a fresh pack from the store, or keep every little plastic bag they get and reuse them all over and over again. Just so many little things that I'd forgotten all rush back memories-- it's quite wonderful a feeling.

On with the recapturing.

After finally arriving on Sunday night in Hefei, we rested almost all day on Monday attempting to overcome the jetlag. I had my hair cut and straight permed at this quite upscale hair salon just outside my grandparents' house. It took literally 3 or 4 hours! At first I wasn't sure about the length/thinness, but now I've come to realize how convenient it is for the summer heat. And I look really Chinese now. :) On Tuesday we went more into the center of the city to a photography studio. They make these amazing glamour shots for ridiculously cheap prices (but then again, every price in China is that), but this process also wasted an entire day. Being pampered with make up and hair-do's and dresses for hours is exhausting! In the end, I've come to realize multiple things:
1. I am way too tan for Chinese culture. In China, pale white skin is fashionable-- if you have dark skin, you're a farmer and low class. If you have white skin, you are presumably rich and sit inside all day. In America, if you are dark, you are presumably rich and spend your day at the beach/lake house outside. So every time I see someone, they always say "ni shai hei le!" ("You've tanned yourself black!") Oh well, I guess I'm not so beautiful here.
2. I should have found a Chinese boyfriend (or at least lied the multiple times I was asked). The interrogation goes: Do you have a boyfriend in America? Is he Chinese? ... Oh... Why don't you find a Chinese man?!
3. I can't smile with two rows of teeth. I don't really understand this but apparently I can't show emotion, haha. Every time the photographer ask me to smile, he'd immediately tell me, "no, too big!" Even my grandparents didn't like my senior pictures because my smile was "too big." Sigh.
4. I don't know any manners. When asked if I was hungry for lunch during the day, I promptly answered yes (the truth). But I realized my mistake when they laughed and labeled my American-ness. In China when you're with people that's not your immediate family, you're supposed to be this different level of "polite"-- "keqi." So if someone asks if you are thirsty, even if you've been crawling in the Sahara for weeks, you must say, "Oh, no, I'm fine, don't worry about it." Your host is supposed to then pressure you, "Don't be so polite! Take this water!" And so the customary exchange goes for everything. So me saying I was hungry was a terrible no-no (but I was forgiven for being American).

Anyway, Wednesday my mom and I left in the early morning on a bus to Huangshan, which is in the southern part of Anhui Province (of which Hefei is capital). Here is a map of Anhui:
The bus ride was a mere 3.5 hours, which my mom said when she had visited the mountains when she was in college in the early 80s, the trip used to take the entire day (8 hours I think). Now, "the Americans" have given a lot of money to build this huge highway that is basically only used to get to this location-- there are hardly any cars on the road except I'm sure those traveling to see Huangshan. My grandparents used to always tell me when I was young that I would have to one day climb the range, but I always imagined a small park or something-- it turns out Huangshan is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

On Wednesday afternoon then we visited 3 of the smaller parks around the base of the mountain. First was "Longfongyuan" or "Phoenix Springs." The park consisted of small springs of the purest water:

I love the sound of running water. I suppose I'm inherently predisposed to loving waters and falls because I'm named after Sichuan (my Chinese name is Chuan, 川) which is a famous river circuit and gorge in China.

Here is a rock that looks like a pig. :)

The water looked so cool and refreshing and delicious-- I wanted to jump in, but signs forbade us as those waters are downstream the drinking waters for the villages around Huangshan.

Below is the setting around the base of the mountain as we drove to our next destination- small villages where all the farmers live who work on Huangshan cha-- the place is famous for its tea cultivation! In fact, we sat in a tea house and tried multiple samples of their tea (delicious). Who knew there were so many varieties?

Next we arrived at "Shemenxia" or "Stone Gate Gorge."
Traditional pagoda entrance.
A stone path led by luscious bamboos.
One of the springs, the character carved there is "yuan" which carries a Buddhist insinuation of fate, or reincarnated destiny to encounter someone or something. (Lost in translation, perhaps.)
Everywhere Huangshan area is most famous for oddly-shaped stones which have been naturally carved by forces of wind, water, weather, etc. This rock above is a dog... which I below mounted.
Climbing the dog stone.
The top of the mountain is here. I wish I knew how tall it was because at the top, I climbed down the side of the rock with those yellow characters carved into it. The hike was a little bit hard to manage-- our tour guide persistently attempted to dissuade my desire to hike the mountain, insisting we hadn't the time.... So I just ran really fast up the stairs until she couldn't say no anymore. :P Once at the top, the labor was worth it for the views- cascading mountain sides endless to sight, verdant with pine trees, woven with plush clouds... in a word, beautiful.
See all those locks.... I caved into the peer pressure:

Everywhere on top of the mountain people bought locks to engrave with your name and the date that you visited. Most were couples who linked their locks together-- you were forbidden to keep the key for eternity's sake, so the man who sold this warned me I'd better be sure that I'm locking away my name to Chris forever.... (But I'll go back with a chainsaw if I have to! Ha, I kid.) I linked mine to my mother's name then linked Chris's below mine; supposedly if you are married you intertwine the locks, and if not, they are linked in succession with the chased one above and the chaser below. (Guess who's on top....) And then tossed the keys off the side of the mountain! (I've decided Chris is coming back to engrave the day when he sees the mountains- the date is now blank.)

So the most exciting part of the trip was me climbing down that first picture of that rock cliff face that had the engravings on it which reads "she men tian xia xiou," translating roughly to "stone gate, beauty unmatched on earth" or "stone gate, heavenly unmatched beauty" or something.... (Again, lost in translation?) Anyhow, the tour guide, the man managing the locks/repelling system, as well as the three college girls my age who hiked up slowly enough to catch the end of my roping, were all really shocked that I, a girl, would dare to do this. (All Chinese girls are delicate and dainty.... sweatily clamoring up the mountain in itself was an indication of my American upbringing.) So I climbed down 2 of the 5 characters, which was enough to give me a taste of the danger of relying on a "safety belt" that could hardly be called a harness [it was just a band across my stomach which the service man had to hold onto so I wouldn't free fall the hundreds of feet (maybe even thousands, I'm not so good at measuring distance with mere eyesight)] and that was probably as old as I am. I did, however, let go of the rope to let both my hands free (which the man claimed no one else had ever dared to do).... Either I'm just bold, or I'm brash and stupid. But I survived. :)
Next we went to Nine Dragon Waterfalls (Jiulongxia).
Entrance with a little pond and water-spouting dragon and goldfishies and whatever else aesthetically pleasing in a garden.
The base of the falls.
On the way up every mountain, there are workers haggling to service you with these bamboo rickshaw for just 50 Yuan (not even 9 dollars). Quite amusing I found-- almost always carrying those fragile Chinese girls who couldn't endure the entire hike (though admittedly it was a little rough).
"Nine-Dragon Falls" is so called because there are nine tiers of waterfalls. The picture above is the first, second, and third tiers. (The one above that is another tier, I think the fourth or fifth?) Can you spot me on the left side of the second tier in the picture below? I'm a white speck! I feel like it really gives you the sense of how enormous and stunning these waterfalls were.

For your laughs again, this is a translated sign beside a waterfall/spring area. (I should just try to find a bad translation for every post, huh. It wouldn't be so difficult.)"Warning: Rain the hour:Prevent the swollen mountain stream occurrence, and please not the water to inside play the water, and keep off the water side, and carefully slip and fall down."
:D Harhar.

I'll begin another entry to describe the Thursday and Friday's events in the actual Huangshan range. We're off to Guilin tonight for four days, after which I'll be flying to Shenzhen to see my biological dad (whom I also haven't seen for 7 years) and my half-sister Lele (in English best as Joy) who is now an incredible age of 11, and then off to Hong Kong for a few days before Thailand! Hopefully I will have time now to finish a post about Huangshan. Otherwise, you can see all my pictures so far at my Picasa web album here. :) Enjoy!

"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign." - Robert Louis Stevenson

[We'll see if I can keep up with this-- it seems like every minute of my travels from years past should have been captured with a thousand words each, but never could I have found the time to record them all. And now as a matured wanderer of the world, I suppose a log of my thoughts might be good for posterity's sake.]

I've been in China now about a week- more than a week gone from the States. The differences that seven years absent of a return have made to the nation I once called home are more than palpable.

I departed Atlanta Hartsfield at 11:33 AM last Friday the 20th for Minneapolis, where I met my dearest mother for yet another transfer flight to yet another transfer destination- Tokyo Narita International Airport. (The flight was exactly 12 hours, but it was the first time in the past few years where an international flight I've flown had no individual TVs-- torture, I tell you! But I digress.... We Americans are more than just spoiled.) Here we were hassled by a two hour's wait which turned into two hours of trying to procure the right boarding pass for our Air China flight to Shanghai Pudong Airport. (But to be honest, I would have been pleased to be 'inconvenienced' by an overnight stay in Tokyo- she's on my list of to-go's for sure.) Oh, I encountered my first bidet for which I was apparently too bashful to try-- maybe I'll grow the guts on my flight back from Bangkok.

Our penultimate destination held us at almost 11 PM China time, where the negligence of the airport staff misled us to the domestic sector of the airport while our baggage floated toward the international claims. The security guards crowded the entire plane's passengers into one room (first lesson- no personal space in China) where every man and woman was shouting in Chinese about not being able to catch the last bus at 11 to their prospective homes (second lesson- no inside voices in China). Once at the baggage claim, my mom finds that her suitcase is missing (stuck in Tokyo) because we switched flight carriers (Northwest to Air China). My backpack was lucky enough to find its way-- but after losing my bags for two days in Tanzania last summer, I've learned to pack at least a day's worth of necessities in my day pack.

Anyhow, Shanghai-- we made the last bus at 11:05 PM to the stop near our hotel where as soon as our feet touched the ground, we had trailing us workers from small hotels haggling to get our service, regardless of how many times we explained we already booked a hotel. "Your hotel doesn't have windows.... The beds aren't comfortable.... I'll make our hotel a hundred dollars cheaper just for you!" Lugging our stuffs we struggled in the dark streets (no taxes to pay for that wonderful luxury called street lamps) to find our hotel, which turned out to be quite nice for the $40 we were paying (and there was a window with even a river's view- those hagglers know how to lie alright).

The time change is a drag-- we slept for only a few hours and woke up at 6 AM with absolutely no desire to keep dozing. Our morning was really our night (China is 12 hours ahead), and as we wandered in search of a supper, all the smells of customary Chinese breakfast enticed my nostrils-- soy milk soup, fried breadstick things, steamed buns and dumplings, everything!!! Basically my heart is still pounding every time I walk past a street vendor with some delicious treat that I haven't had the conscience to miss the past several years... and now I'm always hungry! And for everything. The most rare fruit (lychee, different berries, watermelon- ok not so rare but I once had to go to the hospital for eating too much watermelon in China-- believe it), or meats (turtle, frog, duck tongue, eel), or whatever other flavor (mung -sp?- bean soup, zhong zi- sticky rice wrapped in leaves basically, tofu bean curf sauce thing, bok choy, and oh, my God, the ice cream popsicles that are like 10 cents each) I can find that isn't found in the States-- I devour. Half the things I can't even name in English! But... I digress-- we ate that morning for less than 3 American dollars a giant breakfast that left me unbuttoning my pants. Next we shopped on Nanjing Road for the afternoon, but prices there were still too expensive for our Chinese tastes. I mean, a $5 (30 Yuan) shirt is too expensive! Haha. We left on a bullet train to Hefei (capital of Anhui Province) in the afternoon which cost a mere $20 for the whole ride. (Another development is this train- it used to take 9 hours from Shanghai to Hefei, but now it's only 4, and with stops too!)

I found this sign funny:
The sign reads "Soft Waiting Lounge" and "Rigidity Waiting Lounge." What they meant was one side was the first class and the other was the coach class. You'd think for a busy train station in the largest city in China they'd hire better translators....

Another observation about China: there are people EVERYWHERE. It is kind of insane, especially in the big cities like Shanghai and Hefei. But 1.2 billion people isn't a joke. I didn't realize the population in Hefei (which is my hometown that I grew up in and always assumed to be a small town just by the nature of my childhood) was nearing 1.5 million people! One of our family friends who happens to be the head of the city government's accounting department said even that number is inaccurate as a new census including the metro area near Hefei is about 3 million! This is my impression of the city (taken in Hefei):
People walking, bicycling, motorbicycling, driving, bussing... everwhere. Driving is also ridiculous here-- well for one, obviously Chinese people can't drive because they're too short to see over the dashboard (joke). But seriously, no one maintains the lane-- if there are 2 lanes, 3 cars will drive across them. The dashed lines are more suggestions than rules. One thing that I found in common with Tanzania is how honking is ubiquitous and not rude or a sign of agitation. Instead, if you'd like to pass another car, you don't use your blinkers, you use your horn... which consequently leaves the city echoing with buzzing car toots. (You're startled the first few days, but your ears will drown them out as simple background ambience soon enough.)

There is also construction everywhere. Sets and sets of buildings on the horizon appear as if some monstrous baby (see Spirited Away, haha) was placing Lego pieces neatly on our roads. The China of yesterday is being slowly replaced by a new face. You see the crumbled dirt roads and alleys of Shanghai in one second, and ten yards away is an air-conditioned high rise with stores like FCUK and some French boutiques.
Top: back streets near our hotel. Bottom: chic Nanjing Road mall.

Well, my mom and I anchored in our seats on the train, and before I passed out, I noticed the men sitting next to us drinking warm Tsingtao beer (for some reason people hate cold drinks in China- always hot tea, warm water, and tepid cola) to accompany their packaged tofu, eggs, and meat-on-a-stick kebab things. Quite made me feel at home somehow. We arrived in Hefei on Sunday night where I was reunited with my grandparents (whom I call my Waigong, Waipuo)!! I thought I would burst into tears of happiness, honest. They were my parents for 8 years of my life, and I owe more than who I am today to them.... I love them so much!

Well, I'm really quite worn out from recapturing just the first two days of my trip. (Blast my silly verbosity!) So far China has been more than graceful to me, a dove that has flown away from her mother as they would say here. I'll try to write more tomorrow about my experience in Hefei and also more importantly, our trip to Huangshan Mountain which was absolutely gorgeous beyond words and pictures! Miss and love everyone back home.