Friday was a long day for us. We were picked up at 7am and didn't get home until around 7pm. A full twelve hour day. We hadn't had one of those in a while. Long as it was we had a really good time. We went to the Ming tombs, the Jade Factory, the Great Wall and the Silk Factory. The weather was not the most conducive to seeing the sights and distances that the Wall is known for providing. I was pretty excited that it was a nice cool day and that we even had some rain. The thick fog made for a bit more of an adventure as we were walking from tower to tower. As we couldn't see more than 50-100 meters ahead of us we never knew what was up ahead until it was right in our faces.
Yesterday we went to the "dirt" market and to Wangfujing Street. The street market was a HUGE flea market with pretty much anything and everything that you can imagine. From Chairman Mao paraphernalia to jewelry and Chinese antiques. It's fun to walk around and listen to the bartering and haggling going on around. Wangfujing Street is a pedestrian mall lined with large department stores and various other shops. Just behind Wangfujing is a smaller backstreet, called Wangfujing Snack Street, lined with noodle restaurants and a bit further down with souvenir shops.
After spending the day at the flea market we were famished so we sat down and ate some delicious noodles and beef stir-fry. As we were picking a place to eat the server at the place we chose was asking if we wanted noodles. His English was not very good though and we were having a hard time understanding him. In order to help us understand he pointed up to the banner hanging above the tables and said what we gather to be "You want noodles?" The funny thing was that he was pointing to a sign in Chinese to help us understand his English.
Everyone in the area was walking around with food on sticks. Those sticks held everything from grapes and haw covered in a sugary coating to starfish, beetles and scorpions. Quite a sight to behold. The most popular food-on-a-stick items seemed to be the haw and something that looked like it might have been the legs of a tiny little octopus. Couldn't really say for sure.
Well, here we are on our last evening in Beijing, our last night in China, our last night of the trip! My how these six weeks have flown by! We fly out tomorrow evening at 8:30 and will arrive in L.A. almost three hours before we left. Weird. We'll then be down in Palm Springs for a few days before actually heading home, Elizabeth to Pasadena and me to Portland. We'll be sure to let you know how our travels home go.
We're about to head out to celebrate an incredible journey. And so I will leave you with a quote I saw yesterday and think it is quite fitting in the last 24 hours of this trip: "It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."--Ursula LeGuin.
Take care..
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Pretty Prices
Hello all,
Well, Elizabeth and I have made it to our final stop on this trip. Beijing. Last night we said goodbye to Matt and headed to the Shanghai Train Station. I have no idea where this last week went. It's hard to believe that we will be flying home in less than a week!
Our stay in Shanghai was great. We were able to take it easy and still see a fair bit of the city. We spent one of the days visiting the Eastons (for those of you who know them). The Eastons are family friends who I have know for 10 years believe it or not. Anyway, Elizabeth and I went out to visit them at their apartment and experienced expat-land in Shanghai. They live in a beautiful area, a resort really, that in no way lets on that it is in China. It was an interesting contrast to where we were staying.
A couple of days ago we went to the Yuyuan Gardens. They were beautiful! And surrounding the gardens are markets selling anything and everything you could ever want. It was fun to barter with the merchants. They very much enjoy the interactions and are disappointed if you don't get into it.
My favorite tactic by the merchants was them taking one of us by the arm and saying, "You are beautiful. Very pretty, I give you pretty price." They then made an offer and when told it was too expensive they said, "You give me your high price." So we made an offer (generally 1/4 to 1/2 of their original offer, but sometimes lower) and then they would stick out their bottom lip and say, "Oh no, too low. What your next high price?" If you are persistent with your price you can generally get it or at least something close to it. And if not, you walk away and they say, "okay, okay I give you good price." At which point they will make another offer, not quite as low as you had stated. If you shake your head and continue to walk away they more often than not they will come after you and say, "okay, your price." As you pay (your price) they continue to look at you with that pout and might even say "and 10 just for me." Meaning they want you to give them 10 yuan ($1.25) for them to pocket.
Also fun has been trying to pick up a bit of Chinese. It's not anything like other languages that I have studied. When I was in Russia staying with Elizabeth's family way back when I was able to piece together the Cyrillic alphabet as well as start to understand some of what was being said (mostly vocab, not so much the grammar), it just doesn't work that way with Chinese. There is no figuring out the alphabet like that- there is no alphabet. Instead there are characters which represent words and can be put together to make compound words. The crazy thing is that written Chinese is uniform throughout the country while the spoken language vary greatly. So a Mandarin speaker and a Cantonese speaker could read the same book with no problem, but should they try to read it to one another they wouldn't understand each other at all! And then there are the tones, so one word said with the four different tones can mean four completely different things.
One of our train bunkmates taught me about ten words which proved to be quite useful and we have used those as well as a few others that we have picked up along the way, but Chinese is definitely a language that requires more than a passing interest in learning to get very far.
Well, we didn't get much sleep last night so I think I will be heading in to take a nap.
Well, Elizabeth and I have made it to our final stop on this trip. Beijing. Last night we said goodbye to Matt and headed to the Shanghai Train Station. I have no idea where this last week went. It's hard to believe that we will be flying home in less than a week!
Our stay in Shanghai was great. We were able to take it easy and still see a fair bit of the city. We spent one of the days visiting the Eastons (for those of you who know them). The Eastons are family friends who I have know for 10 years believe it or not. Anyway, Elizabeth and I went out to visit them at their apartment and experienced expat-land in Shanghai. They live in a beautiful area, a resort really, that in no way lets on that it is in China. It was an interesting contrast to where we were staying.
A couple of days ago we went to the Yuyuan Gardens. They were beautiful! And surrounding the gardens are markets selling anything and everything you could ever want. It was fun to barter with the merchants. They very much enjoy the interactions and are disappointed if you don't get into it.
My favorite tactic by the merchants was them taking one of us by the arm and saying, "You are beautiful. Very pretty, I give you pretty price." They then made an offer and when told it was too expensive they said, "You give me your high price." So we made an offer (generally 1/4 to 1/2 of their original offer, but sometimes lower) and then they would stick out their bottom lip and say, "Oh no, too low. What your next high price?" If you are persistent with your price you can generally get it or at least something close to it. And if not, you walk away and they say, "okay, okay I give you good price." At which point they will make another offer, not quite as low as you had stated. If you shake your head and continue to walk away they more often than not they will come after you and say, "okay, your price." As you pay (your price) they continue to look at you with that pout and might even say "and 10 just for me." Meaning they want you to give them 10 yuan ($1.25) for them to pocket.
Also fun has been trying to pick up a bit of Chinese. It's not anything like other languages that I have studied. When I was in Russia staying with Elizabeth's family way back when I was able to piece together the Cyrillic alphabet as well as start to understand some of what was being said (mostly vocab, not so much the grammar), it just doesn't work that way with Chinese. There is no figuring out the alphabet like that- there is no alphabet. Instead there are characters which represent words and can be put together to make compound words. The crazy thing is that written Chinese is uniform throughout the country while the spoken language vary greatly. So a Mandarin speaker and a Cantonese speaker could read the same book with no problem, but should they try to read it to one another they wouldn't understand each other at all! And then there are the tones, so one word said with the four different tones can mean four completely different things.
One of our train bunkmates taught me about ten words which proved to be quite useful and we have used those as well as a few others that we have picked up along the way, but Chinese is definitely a language that requires more than a passing interest in learning to get very far.
Well, we didn't get much sleep last night so I think I will be heading in to take a nap.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Teradactyls, rhinos and more!
Hello friends! Here we are in Shanghai. We arrived in Beijing on the train on Monday (a full 20 minutes early!) and were very pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get down to Shanghai. In the last hour or so of our train ride Elizabeth and I were putting together a plan (rather plans- plan A, plan B, plan C, etc.) for accomplishing all we needed to in order to get down to Shanghai. Get off the train, change some money, find out where the airport is, get to the airport, buy plane tickets, and finally get on the plane.
Well as we came out of the train station I noticed a "Air Ticket Office" sign. So we walked up to the counter and told them where we wanted to go and bought tickets for a 5pm flight (it was just before 3pm at this point). They even wrote down the name of the airport for us in Chinese so that we could give it to a taxi driver. So we got a taxi, went to the airport and caught our flight down here to Shanghai.
We are staying with Matt, one of Elizabeth's friends from college while we're here. He has been in Shanghai for about six months teaching English. Right now Elizabeth and I find ourselves sitting in City Diner with the full repertoire of Michael Jackson's career playing somewhat loudly in the background. I seriously haven't heard this much Michael Jackson in well over 15 years! It's cracking me up.
So what have we been doing for week since we last posted? Traveling. Lots of traveling. Traveling in the form of sitting on a train. After nearly a week on the train I thought I might never want to see another train in my lifetime. That is not at all how I feel though.
The train ride was absolutely incredible. We saw so much! From Moscow through various cities and villages in Russia, past the beautiful Lake Baikal, into Mongolia and through the Gobi Desert with wild horses and camels at watering holes and yurts dotting the landscape to the corn fields and sunflower patches and enormous canyons and gorges of China. Standing at the window staring out at the incredible sights hours could pass by without seeming like more that a couple of minutes.
The first couple of evenings were filled with games of Scrabble and Monopoly with our three British friends who we met at our hostel in Moscow. Generally not a fan of Monopoly because of the sheer ridiculous length of the games I was pleasantly surprised to find that we had finished a six or so hour game without having felt like we had spent a whole day playing. Somehow time on the train disappears as the thousands of kilometers pass by. Changing about an hour a day due to time zones has an odd effect on one's sense of time as well.
We are heading out, enough Michael Jackson for one sitting, but we will report back soon. Perhaps more on the train ride as well as our very interesting bunk mates (and their snoring and toenail clippings) next time. Definitely more on our Chinese experiences though. Be sure to ask Elizabeth about spitting food on the floor in the nice restaurant we went to on her birthday!
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Suffering in Silence
Don't let the title of this blog entry scare you. It's from a magazine article about the Trans-Siberian Railway. This particular portion of the article was talking about the bathrooms on the trains and how they are closed when the train is stopped at a station (since flushing the toilet is essentially opening a hole to the ground. The quote was something to the effect of "memorize the schedule or suffer in silence."
That is one of the many things we have to look forward to in the next six and a half days. We leave tonight at 9:30pm and are scheduled to arrive in Beijing at 2:30pm on Monday. Getting to the train station tonight ought to be an interesting experience as we each have our backpacks, smaller day bags and also have a large duffel bag full of food. Shopping last night for food for our journey it really sort of hit me that we will be on the train for a week. Elizabeth was quick to point out that it isn't a full week because we will be arriving at 2:30, plus there is a five hour time difference between Moscow and Beijing. So we'll be on the train for six days and 12 hours. I'm still going to call it a week.
Since we will be on the train we will not be posting on the blog in that time, so you'll have to wait a whole week to hear from us again. My how things have changed that not hearing from someone overseas for a week is a long time! I'm sure we'll have plenty of adventures from the train to share with you all. There is so much from Moscow that we haven't even had a chance to cover here. I was a bit worried that keeping a blog would leave me with nothing to say when I got back, but that most certainly hasn't been the case so far. We have a couple more things to take care of before we head out, so I'm off.
China here we come...
That is one of the many things we have to look forward to in the next six and a half days. We leave tonight at 9:30pm and are scheduled to arrive in Beijing at 2:30pm on Monday. Getting to the train station tonight ought to be an interesting experience as we each have our backpacks, smaller day bags and also have a large duffel bag full of food. Shopping last night for food for our journey it really sort of hit me that we will be on the train for a week. Elizabeth was quick to point out that it isn't a full week because we will be arriving at 2:30, plus there is a five hour time difference between Moscow and Beijing. So we'll be on the train for six days and 12 hours. I'm still going to call it a week.
Since we will be on the train we will not be posting on the blog in that time, so you'll have to wait a whole week to hear from us again. My how things have changed that not hearing from someone overseas for a week is a long time! I'm sure we'll have plenty of adventures from the train to share with you all. There is so much from Moscow that we haven't even had a chance to cover here. I was a bit worried that keeping a blog would leave me with nothing to say when I got back, but that most certainly hasn't been the case so far. We have a couple more things to take care of before we head out, so I'm off.
China here we come...
Monday, August 27, 2007
Monday Evening
Tomorrow is our last day in Moscow! I am sad to go, but I'm ready to get on the train again. I'm definetely not tired of the train yet; in fact I feel as if our great train adventure is just beginning (which it really is since we will be traveling until next Monday). We've met these three great English guys in our hostel who are also traveling on the same train and will be going with us to Irkustk. One of them is in a choir and will be doing a concert in the Forbidden City the same weekend we'll be Beijing!! How crazy is that? Unfortunately they are in the 3rd wagon and we are in the 15th, but I'm sure there will be much going back and forth between our wagons, especially since they saw the food Katie and I purchased today for the trip:) I don't think they've thought about food yet, although they will only be on the train for 3 days instead of 6. I could probably eat noodles for 3 days, but not for 6 days straight! It's so great to have met friends already and in fact i can hear Katie laughing and talking with them now in the other room! We've actually met quite a few friends, all of whom we refer to as "our friend..." (followed usually not by their name - names aren't always necessary among travelers, but by some descripter like "our friend the English teacher" or "our friend the German Austrian". Some we'll never see again but some we'll meet later on in the trip, like our English friend in the choir.
Certainly if I would have had more time here there are more things I would have liked to see or do, but I feel satisfied with our time here. Going to Ryazan would have been great, but I think it was really important that I stay in the once place for a few days and not be traveling or moving. Today we visited Christ the Savior Cathedral and we did make it to Novodevichy as well. The convent has a fascinating history, which we caught bits of pieces of by readings an excerpt of a book I'm reading called "Around the Bloc; My life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana" and eavesdropping on English tourguides, and remembering a bit of Russian history that we both have studied at one point. We of course did not pay to have our own tour and in fact we didn't even pay what we were supposed to as foreigners (it's better not to read the signs but just walk up to the cashier and ask for a ticket). The cemetary was free; however we paid 50 rubles (2 dollars) for a map telling us where to find all the famous dead guys. This came in handy as it's a very large cemetary and we didn't want to miss anything. I could have spent hours walking around just looking at the ornate gravestones and decorated plots. Some of the more famous people we found were Tolstoy, Gogol, Breshnev, Chekov, and Yelstin.
Katie did not mention the two highlights of our trip to Izmailova; the vodka museum and our soviet propoganda posters. We both saw an add for the museum and knew that our trip to Moscow would not be complete without visiting it. It gave a very fascinating history of Russia's most famous drink. I'm coming up with some "fun facts" that I learned so if you're interested i can share that with you. The second highlight for me was the posters we purchased. We were both looking really without any intention of purchasing anything but ended up coming away with with tw0 large envelopes containing about 24 posters each. The guy who sold them to us was so sweet! When he found out that we were continuing on our train trip to China he rushed to the back of the stall and pulled out this set of posters all celebrating the friendship between Russia and China during the Soviet period. Some of them have pictures of a Russian guy and a Chinese guy holding hands and they say something like, "we celebrate friendship for the sake of happiness and prosperity" or "Those who strive together, stand together", or "We seek true communism".
It's getting quite late and I haven't packed my things yet. We may be able to post again tomorrow otherwise the next one will be from Shanghai!
Certainly if I would have had more time here there are more things I would have liked to see or do, but I feel satisfied with our time here. Going to Ryazan would have been great, but I think it was really important that I stay in the once place for a few days and not be traveling or moving. Today we visited Christ the Savior Cathedral and we did make it to Novodevichy as well. The convent has a fascinating history, which we caught bits of pieces of by readings an excerpt of a book I'm reading called "Around the Bloc; My life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana" and eavesdropping on English tourguides, and remembering a bit of Russian history that we both have studied at one point. We of course did not pay to have our own tour and in fact we didn't even pay what we were supposed to as foreigners (it's better not to read the signs but just walk up to the cashier and ask for a ticket). The cemetary was free; however we paid 50 rubles (2 dollars) for a map telling us where to find all the famous dead guys. This came in handy as it's a very large cemetary and we didn't want to miss anything. I could have spent hours walking around just looking at the ornate gravestones and decorated plots. Some of the more famous people we found were Tolstoy, Gogol, Breshnev, Chekov, and Yelstin.
Katie did not mention the two highlights of our trip to Izmailova; the vodka museum and our soviet propoganda posters. We both saw an add for the museum and knew that our trip to Moscow would not be complete without visiting it. It gave a very fascinating history of Russia's most famous drink. I'm coming up with some "fun facts" that I learned so if you're interested i can share that with you. The second highlight for me was the posters we purchased. We were both looking really without any intention of purchasing anything but ended up coming away with with tw0 large envelopes containing about 24 posters each. The guy who sold them to us was so sweet! When he found out that we were continuing on our train trip to China he rushed to the back of the stall and pulled out this set of posters all celebrating the friendship between Russia and China during the Soviet period. Some of them have pictures of a Russian guy and a Chinese guy holding hands and they say something like, "we celebrate friendship for the sake of happiness and prosperity" or "Those who strive together, stand together", or "We seek true communism".
It's getting quite late and I haven't packed my things yet. We may be able to post again tomorrow otherwise the next one will be from Shanghai!
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Monday Morning
It's Monday morning and it's pouring outside. Although the rain is extremely welcome after such a hot spell in Moscow, I have to say that I'm a little disapointed. We had planned to walk to the forest around the area where I lived when I first moved here. It's a beautiful walk through the forest to an underground spring there with pure water that i'm guess has been blessed by an orthodox priest at some point in history. Our plan was to load up all our water bottles and fill them up for the train while enjoying the natural beauty of the forest (wonderful - aside from the heavy water bottles and mosquitos!).
I would still like to visit the Novodevichy Convent and so hopefully if the rain subsides a little we will be able to do that. In every country I go to I always try and visit a cemetary or a graveyard. I love the history, the symbolism, the beauty, and the peacefullness. There are several fascinating cemetaries in Ryazan (the city where I spent the last 3 years living) that I would have like to take Katie to, but unfortunately we won't be making a trip there this time. There is a WWII cemetary there and I love to walk up and down reading the plain white gravestones. It's not hard to calculate the ages of the young men when they died because they were all around 18 or 19. Anyway, I'll tell you more about Novodevichy a little later. I have to get off the computer and eat some breakfast!
I would still like to visit the Novodevichy Convent and so hopefully if the rain subsides a little we will be able to do that. In every country I go to I always try and visit a cemetary or a graveyard. I love the history, the symbolism, the beauty, and the peacefullness. There are several fascinating cemetaries in Ryazan (the city where I spent the last 3 years living) that I would have like to take Katie to, but unfortunately we won't be making a trip there this time. There is a WWII cemetary there and I love to walk up and down reading the plain white gravestones. It's not hard to calculate the ages of the young men when they died because they were all around 18 or 19. Anyway, I'll tell you more about Novodevichy a little later. I have to get off the computer and eat some breakfast!
It's a small world
I can hardly believe that we only have two days left in Moscow. Our time here has passed by so quickly. After the adventure of getting our tickets things have gone far more smoothly.
We spent an afternoon/evening at Red Square and the surrounding park. We were there early enough that it was still light out, and we stayed until it got dark and the lights turned on in the square. It is beautiful at night. There is a completly different feeling about the place. Yesterday we went to Ismailova which is basically a souvenir market, but there are all sorts of wonderful things to see. Basic souvenirs, art, antiques, etc. Elizabeth and I both decided that if we weren't traveling by train we would have each bought a samovar.
We had planned to go to Novodevichy Convent after Ismailova, but realized that it had closed by the time that we were done. So instead we went to Victory Park which is a HUGE war memorial with really fun fountains. It was nice to just wander around and do lots of people watching. The current fashion for men in Russia seems to be capri pants and a pseudo-mullet hair cut. Slightly frightening.
As we returned to the hostel last night I had sort of a weird moment of confusion. The gal sitting at the counter looked very familiar to me, but she was totally out of context. As I fully entered the door she smiled, laughed and said, "I work at this hostel." She had been one of our roommates at the hostel in Prague. It's a crazy small world.
Today Elizabeth and I headed in different directions. Elizabeth went to see her friend Boris and his family (she never actually saw him, but I'll let her fill you in on that) and I was able to spend the afternoon with my dear friend Masha. I met her family and we spent some time catching up. Masha is one of the people I became closest with when I was in Russia last (eight years ago).
As I was on the metro on the way back to the hostel I was doing some thinking and realized that I could stay here in Moscow. I'm definitely excited about the rest of our trip and can hardly wait for our continued adventures, but I could stay here if we weren't continuing on. I'm not sure what will become of that, but I see more time spent in Russia in my future- not that that will surprise anyone.
We spent an afternoon/evening at Red Square and the surrounding park. We were there early enough that it was still light out, and we stayed until it got dark and the lights turned on in the square. It is beautiful at night. There is a completly different feeling about the place. Yesterday we went to Ismailova which is basically a souvenir market, but there are all sorts of wonderful things to see. Basic souvenirs, art, antiques, etc. Elizabeth and I both decided that if we weren't traveling by train we would have each bought a samovar.
We had planned to go to Novodevichy Convent after Ismailova, but realized that it had closed by the time that we were done. So instead we went to Victory Park which is a HUGE war memorial with really fun fountains. It was nice to just wander around and do lots of people watching. The current fashion for men in Russia seems to be capri pants and a pseudo-mullet hair cut. Slightly frightening.
As we returned to the hostel last night I had sort of a weird moment of confusion. The gal sitting at the counter looked very familiar to me, but she was totally out of context. As I fully entered the door she smiled, laughed and said, "I work at this hostel." She had been one of our roommates at the hostel in Prague. It's a crazy small world.
Today Elizabeth and I headed in different directions. Elizabeth went to see her friend Boris and his family (she never actually saw him, but I'll let her fill you in on that) and I was able to spend the afternoon with my dear friend Masha. I met her family and we spent some time catching up. Masha is one of the people I became closest with when I was in Russia last (eight years ago).
As I was on the metro on the way back to the hostel I was doing some thinking and realized that I could stay here in Moscow. I'm definitely excited about the rest of our trip and can hardly wait for our continued adventures, but I could stay here if we weren't continuing on. I'm not sure what will become of that, but I see more time spent in Russia in my future- not that that will surprise anyone.
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