Quick trip around

So my friend Tom has been here and we took a quick trip out of Beijing to Xi'an and Chengdu

Xi'an

Terracotta Warriors

The Shaolin Temple

Chengdu and Pandas

Going into the Forbidden City

Having wandered around the Forbidden City the other day, it was time to brave the crowds and go back in! It was a weekday but for some reason it was completely packed. The weather has been great though and this day was no exception.

Going into the Forbidden City

It was a little bright for great photo taking though.

Back in Beijing

Back in Beijing and Tom has come to visit!
After spending the Thursday resting and the Friday working, we went out for a walk around in central Beijing.
Not the best day for taking photos although it was super clear (for Beijing anyway)

Walking around the Forbidden City

San Francisco

We just got back from San Francisco, where we had gone to see our friends Giles and Suzi get married! And we also did an astronomical amount of shopping!

San Francisco - Out and About

I also took some shots of the wedding, sorry they're not much good. Of all the types of photographers I am not, I am especially not a wedding photographer :)
The wedding was really nice though. In Golden Gate Park, it was nicely set up and all went off without a hitch. Jane had to read some of the script from Buffy which may have surprised some people, but not the ones who know either Suzi or Giles! It also went very well.

Giles and Suzi Get Hitched!

We had a fantastic time, it was great to catch up with friends. One of the things about being in China is that it is pretty isolating so seeing friends that I hadn't seen since the last time we were in Aus was really great.

We also got the chance to go for a drive down to Monterrey Bay which was also very nice. San Francisco seems to have terrible weather in the summer, colder than Australia in the winter which surprised me (even though EVERYONE told me in advance, it's still weird). We had a lot of overcast days except for the wedding so that was a bit like Beijing.

On the whole, a successful trip and I'd definitely like to go back. Maybe in another season though, I'm hoping that the other ones are warmer :)

Beijing Summer Walking

We went for a walk around the Muslim Quarter in Beijing. We couldn't go into the mosque (because we were wearing shorts) but the oldest Buddhist temple in Beijing was fantastic.

Beijing - Out and About

Hiking (all of) the Ming Tombs

Just before we went to Chicago, we went on a hiking trip to the Ming Tombs.
Sigh.

It was quite a trip. We walked around 20km in the 38 degree heat, visiting each of the Ming Tombs without going into any of them. And they are all the same.

Hiking the 13 Ming Tombs

Rainy

Apparently July gets around 60% of Beijing's annual rainfall. I think I can believe it. Yesterday it rained all day and it was like being in an actual shower (not just a rain shower)!

From Random China Photos

Normally this fountain is bone dry but it was overflowing!
We have had about 2km visibility lately, it's been really polluted and humid, but after the rain things cleared right up.

From Random China Photos

People are saying that it's going to be really hot and humid for the next 4 weeks so we'll see how it goes.

Photos from Chicago

Chicago

Here are my photos from Chicago. They aren't as good as I was hoping, I didn't really take them at the right times of day but some of them are nice.

Chinese Hiking, Or how I walked for 8 hours to avoid paying $1.60

Jane and I and a few people from Thoughtworks went hiking on Saturday. Let me set the scene:

I am sitting in my chair and I get an email that says "Jane's not back until late, do you want to come to this" which is the end of an email trail with a link to a Chinese website. There is an English version but it doesn't help much.
"Sure" I reply. It only costs 80 yuan (about $13) and we can get out to see some of the countryside.
I get another email saying "OK great, make sure to pack some lunch." Well that seems easy enough. We also pack water, sunscreen, raincoats (I had checked the weather and it said storms later), toilet paper, all the usual stuff for China.

We get up early and cycle over to the meeting place, which is about 10 minutes ride away, and there are 3 buses each with a crowd kind of milling around. We wait for someone who can speak Chinese and we go to the bus. Jane has her 5 fingers shoes on and there is much remarking from the Chinese people about them.
We get on the bus and almost immediately the "leader" goes up the front, get the microphone and starts speaking. Yusiew asks if we need a translation and I said that later is fine. The tour leader talks for about an hour. She seems to be discussing times, lunch, all the normal stuff, then there's mass laughter and we're just ignoring her because that's what you do when you can't understand someone.
After a while, Yusiew turns around and says "OK, basically she's just gone through what we're doing today, but the main point is that this hiking club was put together for the purpose of avoiding paying for any park entry fees."
And we all just look at each other. Really? That seems really weird. She continues "parks in China ask you to pay but they don't really give you anything in return so people make a point of avoiding paying the fees because they don't think it's value for money."
So I ask how much the entry fee is and it's 10 yuan, which is about $1.60 or so. So we're paying 80 yuan to go on a bus and sneak into a park, and bribe the guards at the other end to let us out for the purpose of NOT paying 10 yuan. And this is just the beginning!!
We arrive at a town somewhere, we all get out, pick up some additional water and head off. We're walking up this random alley and we stop in front of the "Community Centre" which is labelled "Worker's" something or other in Chinese. "OK, time for warmup." What? Now we're doing group exercise warmup stuff in the middle of this village while people in cars and on bikes are zooming past. I have video proof too:

You will note how most people seem ludicrously over-equipped with quick dry pants, lightweight hats and walking sticks. A few people even have knee pads!!
So the exercise routine is finished and we head off through the village to a sort of rubbish dump which we proceed to walk through. It stinks!

From Huodong Hiking

We then walk up through a riverbed, across the stream, up the hill and through the fence onto the walking path.

From Huodong Hiking

From Huodong Hiking

We are promptly busted by the guard (they always wear armbands in China!)

From Huodong Hiking

She yells at the leaders for a while and we just keep walking. Then she yells out to the next guard in the line. We still keep walking. Then a guy come roaring past on a motorbike, yelling at us all as he passes. Uh oh. We get a little further and the two leaders and the bike guy are really yelling at each other now. I sort of wander off and take some photos. This is sort of what I was expecting the day to be like, big wide path/road, pretty flat, occasional arguments. Then, with both sides having seen us and played the foreigner card, "I can't believe you would take money from foreigners and then try to sneak them in, that's so terrible," "I can't believe you would charge foreigners for this kind of thing, that's so terrible." Anyway, in the meantime, about 1/3 of our party have headed forward so we start following them and are immediately told we need to go a different way. So we walk with the rest of the group (and in true Chinese fashion it has become a race, a bunch of people MUST be first, they cannot be behind anyone) until we get to a dead end. Which is very pretty but there's no path to go anywhere and we've already lost about 10 people.

From Huodong Hiking

Eventually it turns out that the two people with walkie-talkies are both with us so someone has to go and find the others which takes a while. In the meantime, the other leader is fascinated with Jane's shoes and comes closer while taking photos. He then discovers that he's too close to just walk away so now he has to talk to us! He and Yusiew go through the standards, where are these people from, what do they do, pretty much chapters 1-7 of our Mandarin book so we understand pretty well which is nice!
Finally the others come and we head back a bit, then up this tiny track into the woods. So this is weird. It's about 34 degrees, fairly humid and we're walking through these really dense woods with no idea where we're going. Every so often, someone will stop and pick berries from a tree. It turns out this is a secondary goal of this trip, eating berries and people are pretty serious about it.

From Huodong Hiking

From Huodong Hiking

It was HOT! The path just keeps on getting steeper and steeper and Jane starts struggling a little. And then struggling a little more.

From Huodong Hiking

We started at the bottom of that valley!
One thing that Chinese hikers like to do is keep track of one another, and they do it by constantly making really loud stupid noises to each other that someone must reply to. There's none of the serenity of hiking in other countries! By the end of the day it was getting pretty wearing.
After about 3 hours of walking (maybe, I totally lost track of time), we get to the top and I thought there would be a view but no, there were just trees. So we sat for a few minutes and then started down the other side.
Parts of the descent were steep, and parts were precipitous!

From Huodong Hiking

From Huodong Hiking

We kind of just slid down most of that section, got lost once or twice (not too lost) and after about another hour and a half, made it to the bottom.

From Huodong Hiking

There was a dam, a wall to sit on and eat lunch and some shade. There was also a very inquisitive bug:

From Huodong Hiking

From Huodong Hiking

We were pretty tired at this point. So after a quick rest, the leader comes over and mentions that we're only half done, up the stairs at the top of the mountain is a temple. What now? Jane decides that she's not going to do the walk and I decide to wait with her and the others head off. After about 10 minutes of Jane saying she'll be fine, I quite want to see the temple so I head off after the others. There's a steady stream of people to follow but about 5 minutes after leaving, I'm having second thoughts. This is really steep! Anyway, I get to a split in the path with no clear idea of which way to go. Neither of the Chinese guys with me have any idea either so we go one way and find the trail markers (some gold ribbon wrapped around the tree). After getting a bit further, the two Chinese guys stop and I, having realised they don't know the way either, keep going and find this old guy. He sees me looking confused and says "follow me, I know the way!!" in decent English so I figure I'm in good hands! This old man is like a mountain goat on speed! How I caught him I have no idea because he doesn't seem to believe in rest stops or slowing down. He must be in his fifties but he's practically running up this mountain and I'm definitely struggling to keep up! I have no photos of the trip up because I had my hands full just getting up the path. We get to a bit with a huge tree and a few people seem to have stopped to have a picnic which is nice. He asks me what kind of tree it is in English. I reply that I have "no idea" what kind of tree it is, as trees are not really my thing. "Great!" he says. He said that to most things though so he may have actually been cursing my lack of botanical knowledge.
We were finally getting closer to the top, and there were a few ruined buildings which were really pretty

From Huodong Hiking

Quite what they were doing here on top of a mountain is anyone's guess. Then finally, the gate to the "temple"

From Huodong Hiking

The story that the guy told me is that this is a Ming dynasty temple. I have no doubt that there was a Ming dynasty temple there, but this gate was in no way constructed in the Ming dynasty!
Also, there's not much temple

From Huodong Hiking

From Huodong Hiking

There were some stone blocks that could have been Ming era, they were certainly old

From Huodong Hiking

From Huodong Hiking

From Huodong Hiking

There was still a little more climbing to go though!

From Huodong Hiking

I finally got to the top and it was a platform about a metre wide with a shrine:

From Huodong Hiking

And a very big drop over the side!!

From Huodong Hiking

So I've made it all the way to the top. What I haven't done though, was see the others! There were four of them and they had left about 10 minutes before me but (as was abundantly clear!) they were not here. I asked my nimble guide if there was anywhere else to go up. "Great!" he said. "No, this is the top." I mentioned that I had some friends who had left before me and we hadn't passed them on the way. "Great!" he said! "oh that's bad." Uh oh.
There was a nice view from the top though

From Huodong Hiking

I make my way back down a little and watch the people eating berries off the trees (the guy in the red shirt is my great guide!)

From Huodong Hiking

From Huodong Hiking

After about 25 minutes I decide that the others must have gotten confused and gone back to the starting point so I tell my guide I'll see him at the bottom and head down on my own. I'd just gotten past the "Ming" gate and around the corner when who do I spy but the others struggling up the path. They were pretty surprised to see me! They were even more surprised to see me ahead of them. They had gotten lost on the way up and taken a different path which was much longer. Yusiew asked me (as is her wont) "do you have to pay to get in the temple?" I managed to say with a straight face that I didn't think she would fit in the temple :) But she didn't have to pay.
The walk down by myself was really nice. Except for the thunder I was starting to hear. Given that the path was all slippery rocks and dirt, I didn't want to be here in a thunderstorm so I got a bit of a move on towards the bottom. I did take the opportunity to take a few photos though

From Huodong Hiking

Oh, that's the mysterious tree in the background there so if anyone knows what it is, put it in the comments!

From Huodong Hiking

From Huodong Hiking

I got almost to the bottom when there was a fork I didn't recognise. I took the path that went down and it ended up taking me to the back of the dried up dam we'd seen before. Unfortunately, the path was now blocked by a front-end loader which didn't seem interested in stopping from knocking down the dam to let me past. So back up the hill I went to the fork and found the other stuck at exactly the same point I was at! I said "it's definitely not that way" and we headed back down to where we'd had lunch to find Jane not there and the rain starting. She must have gone further down the road we decide and start walking. There seem to be a few temples in these hills because we saw a lot

From Huodong Hiking

From Huodong Hiking

The last one was a little later, hence the blue sky.
We get to a little tin shack with all the other hikers huddled in it and the heavens opened

From Huodong Hiking

It turned out that they wouldn't let the bus come up the road to get us so we were going to have to walk down to it. We waited until the rain had (mostly) stopped and lead the charge out and down the hill. We lead it for a while, then the people remembered that it meant we were in front and they practically ran down to make sure they were in front!
Eventually, we made it to the bus where there was some more water, which I was pretty glad about as I had run out at the temple I and I was pretty parched. Then after everyone joined us, it was back on the bus for the trip back into town. We hit the traffic this time (as always) so it took much longer but we eventually ended up back at the restaurant. It was packed but we waited for a table and I was glad we did because it was fantastic! It's open 24 hours, it has about 6 menus and the food was great. It's basically a Cantonese restaurant with a few other things like Shanghai dumplings and sticky rice from around Beijing. I hadn't had Cantonese food since we'd come to China so it was really nice to get Yum Cha style dumplings.
After dinner we rode back home and the legs were definitely starting to get sore!
Some of the Thoughtworks people are doing the global corporate challenge so they were wearing pedometers to count their steps (Jane left hers at home!). It turns out Yusiew did just over 30,000 steps that day so we must have walked a fair distance. I thought 16-20km but the leader said 15km. She didn't seem very sure though so I'm going with my number. Either way, my legs are still quite sore and it was quite an experience. We joined the club though so I guess we'll be doing it again!
There are a few more photos here as well:

Huodong Hiking

Whew, well that was a long post! Hopefully it wasn't too boring to read, it was certainly not boring to do :)

Catchup

I haven't posted for a while but I have still been doing things and taking photos of them. These are all albums so click on them to get the full experience.

The weather has finally warmed up. Actually Mum and Dad got the best of the Spring weather. Before they arrived it was still pretty cold, but really warmed up while they were here. A few weeks after they left we got 33 degree weather and it's been pretty steady at that level ever since. We get a bit more rain that in the Winter though which is nice.

We started Mandarin classes again. It had been 6 months since our last class but it actually didn't go too badly, we mostly remembered the words and pronunciation. After a chat with the teacher though, we're going to try to concentrate on more practical language skills rather than the less effective (at least in the short term) character study that people normally study. So we'll see how that goes!

I'm still trying to play the guitar. I've definitely gotten better although I'm still pretty far away from concerts still! I've been trying to practice regularly, but trying to do anything regularly is a bit of a mission. Still, it's fun and I'm enjoying it.

Here's a quick catchup on what's been going on:

Went to the 798 Art District with Jane, Mum and Dad

798 Art District

Went to the Temple of Heaven

Temple of Heaven

Went to the National Museum of China

National Museum of China

Went to the Museum of Shanghai

Shanghai Museum

Went to Shanghai (that's where the museum is!)

Shanghai

Went to Yuyuan Gardens and the Bund (check out the incredible numbers of people in the garden)

Yuyuan Garden and the Bund

Went to Suzhou, famous for gardens and canals. Also check out the incredible numbers of people there!

Suzhou Gardens and Canals

I still have a bunch of photos to go through from when Jane's family were here but I'm getting there.