Days 2-3 - Welcome to the Jungle

SATURDAY, APRIL 23 - SUNDAY, APRIL 24
The sun was shining in through the bus' massive windows as we rolled along. The ride the night before had been harsh but as I looked out I was welcomed by a pleasant scene: tropical trees and shrubs. Welcome to the jungle, I thought.

Sadly, this part of the trip wasn’t all fun and games. I thought because Jinghong, in the Xishuangbanna region, was located far from Yunnan’s other major tourist spots in the north that it would be more real, more rugged and less touristy. I was wrong, very wrong, on all counts.

The first downer was our visit to a botanical garden near Menglun, two hours east of Jinghong. Lonely Planet and a few online travel sites I consulted beforehand alleged that this was one of the most beautiful in the region and had a wild array of tropical flora and fauna. It wasn't and it didn't. Most of the flowers were dead or dying. Their color and energy was all but lost –like my feelings for Xishuangbanna, which was quickly failing to impress. The only exotic animal I saw was a small lizard. Another animal howled at me from a distance but never revealed itself.

On our way back to Jinghong, we stopped in Menghan to see a Dai minority park. Yunnan is home to 25 of China’s 55 minority groups. The Dai are prominent in Xishuangbanna.

“Park” definitely wasn’t the best word for this place -- it was more like a minority zoo. The only difference was the minority “attractions” here could come and go as they pleased and probably weren’t going to try to eat us.

Zoo similarities aside, a re-enactment of the Dai’s water splashing festival brightened up the overall dreary and depressing atmosphere of minority exploitation.

The faux festival began calmly enough with Dai men and women clothed in a vibrant menagerie of red, blue, green and yellow dresses splashing rose petals dipped in water on everyone’s arm. This was the good luck part. The group then moved into a shallow pool surrounding a large water fountain, picked up small plastic containers and began splashing about. The water spiraled into the air and the faces of anyone within close enough proximity to the festivities.

The next day we visited what was described as a “real rainforest,” an out of the way park not many tourists knew about. Maybe this would be fun.

Wrong again.

The forest preserve was packed with loud, camera-totting Chinese tourists who took just as many pictures of me – a wild and exotic specimen if ever they saw one– as they did of the plants and trees. And since it was located next to a major highway, my fascination with the trees and lagoons was frequently interrupted by the honking of cars and trucks as they whizzed by. On top of that, the weather was a bit on the torrential side, which didn’t bother me that much since I was, after all, in a rainforest. It just slowed my ability to take lots of photos.

Part of the preserve eventually wound off into thicker jungle away from the freeway and mob of tourists. The path followed a small stream and eventually wound its way up a hill that provided a stunning view of the lower canopy of the rainforest and the ravine below.

After two days in Jinghong, I was soaked, over my budget and without a single photo of a wild monkey (I was promised wild monkeys by guidebooks and friends). But I was still glad to have trudged through the rainforest. I'll just go and check that off my list of things to do while in China.



GREEN TREES, GREEN WATER: The water in photos of the main lagoon looked a lot cleaner on websites I looked at while planning the JInghong portion of my trip. The waters in this not quite black lagoon looked murky enough to be hiding a creature or two


SPRING HAS SPRUNG: A lush rainbow array of flowers were the centerpiece of the gardens -- too bad most of them were in pretty bad condition, mostly drooping and looking like they were on the verge of completely losing their color


ME AND THE MEKONG: To get into the botanical garden, we had to cross a long suspension bridge over the Mekong River, called the Lancang in Chinese


TREE OF LIFE: This giant ficus was one of thousands of trees at the botanical garden. It also happened to have a "Danger! Poison!" sign hanging nearby, so I refrained from attempting to climb it


RANDOM TEMPLE: Gold temples like this were scattered about the countryside in Xishuangbanna -- places of worship for Buddhists


DAI HOUSES: The basements of each Dai house were open air, with the living quarters elevated. I'm assuming this is because heavy rains would otherwise flood the lower floors of each house


WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE: In Dai culture, water symbolizes purity or the ability to wash away the past and start anew. Splashing water is a gesture of goodwill toward one’s family, friends, neighbors or anyone who happens to get in the way of a water-filled bowl










HIGH FIVE BUDDHA: Xishuangbanna is a Buddhist-dominant region, although more in line with Southeast Asian buddhism as opposed to Tibetan buddhism


IT'S ELEPHANT TIME: China may be known as the land of the dragons, but Xishuangbanna is elephant country. Elephant statues, elephant carvings and elephant chairs were all over the place -- the only thing I had a hard time finding were actual elephants


BAD MONKEY: This monkey was one of three jungle animals I saw during my two days in Jinghong. As I walked past, he tried to grab my shirt and I was quick to move away, given his bloodshot eyes and weird stare


GO AWAY: A torrential downpour added to the effect of walking through the jungle at a rainforest preserve outside Jinghong. It rained, and rained, and rained some more. A pair of shoes was ruined and my backpack and our Lonely Planet guide got soaked, but the photos were worth it


IN THE JUNGLE: An elephant stands guard over the entrance to the rainforest preserve






MY NEW BFF: For 10 kuai (about $2) I got to feed this strange monkey-squirrel looking thing a piece of banana on a stick

Day 1: Kunming and the Night Bus from Hell

FRIDAY, APRIL 22

We hadn’t even landed in Kunming, Yunnan's capital, but I knew I wouldn’t like the city. From the air, a thick layer of smog lay over the city. Once in a taxi, Kunming looked just like Beijing – big buildings, too many people, and pollution. Since I wanted a break from the big city life, getting out of Kunming was priority No. 1.

The first destination of my 10-day trip to Yunnan with travel companion Layla was Jinghong in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, the province’s southern most region located next to Laos and Myanmar. Getting to Jinghong could be done in two ways: by plane or by bus.

A plane ticket would cost 1,500 RMB (a little over $200) but an overnight bus ticket was only 260 RMB ($35). I opted for the latter. Taking a train was out -- Jinghong is located in an undeveloped region that the rails have yet to reach.

The bus itself wasn't bad. Each ticket got you a little bed (bed may be an overstatement, mini coffin is more accurate) while the bus made it way south to Jinghong. My bed was located next to a small room, which I assumed to be the bathroom. I checked the door, but it was locked. I guessed we'd be stopping for bathroom breaks along the way.

We left around 9 p.m. and I fell asleep almost instantly. But around midnight i was awoken by a pounding at the door of the bus bathroom. Someone had to go and was trying to get in. With no luck, the banging stopped -- and then I heard another sound; a trickling sound. The person, a guy, was taking a leak on the bathroom door, a few feet from where I was sleeping.

Needless to say, I found it difficult to sleep after that. Worse still, I too had to use the bathroom and ended up waiting another hour and a half before we stopped at a rest station.

I eventually regained interest in falling asleep and before long the sun was rising over the rice fields and jungle of Xishuangbanna.


OLD CITY, NEW STUFF: The Old City of Kunming was more like a souped up tourist shopping area. The only thing old about it were the people within. Most of the souvenirs were knock-offs of popular Western brands


RANDOM TEMPLE: An old Southeast Asian looking temple was found in the middle of the Old City


THE LOCALS: I wasn't too impressed with Kunming, but I did enjoy watching city elders walking around the Old City area. Note the blue hat and clothes, the same that people wore during Chairman Mao's years in China


OVERNIGHT BEDS: Each bed was just big enough for one person -- one Chinese person that is. I found myself cramped and unable to sleep properly, especially after one of the other passengers found it necessary to relieve himself on the bus door before we reached a rest station


GOOD TO GO: I may be giving a thumbs up before we left the station, but by the end of the journey I definitely had to give the experience a thumbs down. The only thing that would have made the situation worse was if there had been more smokers on the bus

A Journey South of the Clouds

I've been told that if I was going to visit one place in China, before all others, it should be Yunnan (which means south of the clouds in Chinese). The province is home to almost three quarters of China's minority groups. From snow capped mountains to lush jungles, vast plains and large gorges, Yunnan has it all.

For 11 days, my former girlfriend, Layla, and I hiked, rode and flew across the province -- from Jinghong near the border with Myanmar and Laos, to the old cities of Lijiang and Dali and even the Tibertan region around Shangri-la, located near the lower reaches of the Himalayan Mountains.

Some places were a bit touristy, others just as wild and untouched by commercialization as they've been for hundreds of years, but everything was impressive. I can vouch for that based on the number of gifts I bought and photos I took (somewhere around 1,500).

Getting Ready for Another Great Adventure

Adventure hat. Check.

Brand new Canon 500D with 15 mega pixels, 200mm lens, and lots of other features I'm still trying to figure out how to use. Check.

Lonely Planet guide, without which I would be totally lost and never heard from again. Check.

I'm off today on another adventure in China. Last year, I visited Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This year, I'll be journeying south to Yunnan Province, a region that borders Vietnam and Myanmar. For 11 days I'll wander around the province, from jungles to mountains and even the border area with Tibet. Check for posts and pictures sometime in May.

Celebrity on a Train

It was just another Monday morning as I rode Line 2 toward Fuchengmen, the closest subway station to my office. I had just missed the morning rush and a few empty seats near the end of the bench awaited my still sleepy body. With headphones firmly planted into each ear, I sat and watched as station after station rolled by.

Somewhere along the line, the empty seats next to and across from me filled up with four older men wearing tattered brown and gray jackets. Their skin was a leathery color, much darker than some of the other people in the subway car; their clothes were a little dirty and they were carrying large duffle bags. Migrant workers, I guessed, or country folk at the least. Their skin tanned from a life of labor under the unforgiving sun.

I stared at my iPod’s screen searching for a new song, but out of the corner of my eye I could see the one guy leaning in close, as if to see what was happening on the tiny screen I was so fixated on. Nearer he drew, a bit too close for comfort actually. Then he stopped his sudden invasion of my personal space. There was a pause, then a flash. I looked up. The man sitting across from me had a camera in his hand and was giving the thumbs up to the one sitting next to me. There was laughing as they looked at the camera’s screen. The guy had taken a photo – and I was the main subject.

A few moments later, a second shooting occurred followed by more laughter from the group. I looked up briefly, smiled and turned my attention back to the iPod. Such is the life of a foreigner in Beijing.

This wasn’t the first time someone had taken my picture, although most of the time I’ll get a slight tap on the shoulder and see a smiling Chinese person holding a camera and motioning me to stand next to someone already posing in front of some landmark or tourist attraction. These discreet, spy-like encounters, while amusing, are uncommon.

In my pre-China preparation two years ago, I’d read these types of requests are fairly common for Western tourists. Often the case, Chinese tourists from the country’s hinterlands where foreigners aren’t so abundant come to big cities like Beijing or Shanghai, see the national landmarks and also run into many of their foreign tourist counterparts. With fancy cameras in hand, many will muster up the courage to tap these pale-complexioned people on the shoulders and ask for a photo.

That was probably the case with my subway encounter: the dark-skinned migrants, probably from a far off province, were taking a photo of chalk-white me to write home about. I could only image the letter or e-mail that would accompany the photo; probably something along the lines of “We saw the strangest thing on the subway today. It was dressed funny, had pasty white skin and had chords coming out of its ear as it stared at this tiny hand-held screen device!”

Or maybe they thought I was [insert name of famous movie star]. Either way, it brightened my morning.


During my first visit to Tiananmen Square, a group of high school age Chinese girls could barely hold back fits of giggles as they asked to have their photo taken with me. I was skeptical at first since I thought they were trying to sell me something but quickly agreed and had someone take a picture of me with the girls as well


Atop the Fragrant Hills outside Beijing, a cool looking Chinese dude wanted a photo with me, looking equally as cool at the time


While traveling in China’s western-most region, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, I stopped to enjoy the scenery of a lake and waterfall and soon found a queue of Chinese tourists admiring me and waiting to have their photo taken with the only foreigner for miles. If I’d charged a fee that time, I could have made an easy 50 kuai ($7)


In Shanghai, a young woman approached me on the Bund next to the Huangpu River and said that I was “very beautiful” before handing her camera off to a friend for a quick pic. She followed her comment with an unexpected “You should remember me forever” but ran off before I could get a name or number


While sitting on the Bund between takes for Beijing Review's Days and Nights in Shanghai DVD project, a young woman walked up and started talking with me. We talked for a while about the project and Shanghai, but I couldn't quite get her to ask me for an autograph

Love Beijing, Love Beijing Not

Three weeks of vacationing in Tamaqua after an 18-month work stint in Beijing allowed me to get back into an American swing of things. It also had me missing certain aspects of life in Beijing and made me realize there were just some things I could live without, no matter what continent I’m on.

MISSED ABOUT BEIJING
Public Transportation
My commute to work in the morning is made easy by Beijing’s public transportation network. After leaving my apartment, I walk about a half football field’s distance before arriving at my nearest subway entrance, take the train for 15 minutes, then jump on a bus which drops me off right in front of my office. In all, it takes about 40 minutes, most of which is spent waiting for the train or bus. A one-way subway ticket costs about $0.30; bus fares are $0.15.

Bargaining
Nothing beats naming your own price. When shopping in Beijing’s many street markets, where knock-off products are aplenty, you can basically do just that, but not without a fight. The basic assumption among local vendors is that all foreigners are “rich.” As such, they’ll do anything and everything they can to squeeze as much money out of you as possible. Prices are usually inflated 500-700% of what they are worth, so verbally arguing about the cost and quality or showing a sudden disinterest can usually get the price bargained down to something more reasonable.

Tailor-made Clothes
I’ve never been a big fan of clothes shopping. The crowds, lack of desired sizes and time commitment has always been a deterrent to venturing to any mall. The same is true in China, except here those three factors are compounded by the fact that my Mandarin is far below par.

My solution: have most of my clothes tailor made. Tailors are numerous in Beijing, so I can have dress shirts made for the perfect fit at the perfect price, about $14. Tailor-made suits cost around $90, depending on the fabric.

COULD LIVE WITHOUT
Spitting
Many a time I’ve been walking along the streets of Beijing admiring the buildings, people watching and enjoying the weather only to have the moment shattered by a loud ackkkk-tooof as someone gurgles up something from their throat and hawks it to the ground. Yes, I’ve almost been spit on.

Apparently, it’s very therapeutic and good for your health, but it’s also downright disgusting.

Cranky Cab Drivers
I won’t go as far as calling Beijing cab drivers racist, but from time to time they definitely discriminate against foreigners. Too often, open cabs have driven right past me or friends only to stop a few yards away to pick up Chinese passengers. I’ve actually run up to taxis in the process of dropping passengers off and had the driver wave his hand, give me the stink face and then drive down the street to pick up other non-foreign passengers.

From time to time, cab drivers will tell me to get out of their cab after I tell them my desired destination because traffic in that area will be too heavy or they simply don’t want to go to that part of town.

Rush Hour Traffic
Growing up in the calm hills of northeast Pennsylvania, I was never able to experience the chaotic-yet-comfortable big city life. Now I get to feel it every day. The only downside is that come rush hour all 13 million Beijing residents seem to be going exactly where I want to go, which delays me anywhere from 10 minutes to over an hour.

I’ve spent the better part of two years standing while taking the subway in the morning to work, although I’ve started coming in later to avoid the morning rush. And buses feel more like sardine cans on wheels with people smooshed up against the large glass windows.

Smog
The air quality in Beijing at times can be a major pain, especially for someone with allergies as annoying as mine. In the two years of living in Beijing, there have been a noticeable number of days where I’ve just stayed indoors because the sky was an apocalyptic-looking red, brown or gray or I couldn’t see the buildings across the street from my apartment.

While back in the States, the cough I’d developed in Beijing, which I had just assumed was due to poor health and the frigid winters, vanished. I’m back in Beijing, and, after a few days of murky skies when I got back in mid-February, so is the cough. But since the alternative to solving this problem is to go back home or live in a bubble, I’ll just grin, bear it and keep on wheezing.

GRAY AREA
Blocked Internet
I’m up in the air about not having unlimited access to the Internet. Most American social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like – are blocked for a variety of political reasons I won’t get into.

But as inconvenient as it’s been, I feel like I have much more control over my life. Not being able to check Facebook, without the use of certain Great-Firewall-of-China- bypassing software, means I don’t spend hours on end checking up on friends’ profiles. And the friends that really matter have made it a point to keep in touch with me through this old thing called e-mail.

I will say that I miss YouTube, because watching Charlie bite fingers or anesthesia-induced David after the dentist never gets old.

Last Snow of the Season

While I've already put my heavy winter jacket away for the year, I'm putting up some pics from the last snow of the season. Just when temperatures appeared to be on the rise when I got back to Beijing a cold front moved in and the government shot its iodine rockets to seed the clouds to make it rain/snow/precipitate to alleviate the drought conditions in Beijing. I took my new Canon 500D out for a spin to test it out in the wintery conditions and snap a few shots -- proof that it actually snowed in Beijing this year.

I spent the afternoon walking around Hou Hai, the lake area just north of the Forbidden City, taking pictures and enjoying the snow. It may not have been the snowstorms that I witnessed while visiting home, but it was still nice to walk around in it and not have to worry about shoveling later.




SNOW WRITER: Just like in America, they write in the snow. Possible translation: Clean me!


LONG LINE: Taking a ride in a rickshaw through the hutong near Hou Hai is always fun. In the cold weather... maybe not so much


STONE COLD: A few stone statues at one of the bars


SNOW FUN: Finally, someone used the snow wisely and made a snowman. The few times that it's snowed, I haven't seen enough of these guys around the city


SHENGDAN LAOREN: Santa with Chinese characteristics


WHITE LAKE: Snow covered Hou Hai and the the drum and bell tower in the background

Smog On, Smog Off

I knew I was back in Beijing, after a few weeks of much needed vacationing at home, not by the number of Chinese people around me or the Chinese characters on every sign but by the thick cloud of smog hovering in the air.

“Welcome back Brandon,” I thought to myself. The depressing haze made me want to jump on the first plane bound State-side for another few weeks of vacation and blue skies.

Pollution is a serious problem in Beijing, but when you have millions of cars jamming the streets, what can you expect?

The day after I returned to China, the pollution level in the capital city went “beyond measurable pollution levels,” according the U.S. embassy which tracks these levels daily. Chinese officials warned people, especially the elderly, to stay indoors. I wanted to do the same, but, alas, three weeks of vacation meant I would be missed at work.

Luckily, most of my commute to work was underground – a subway took me across the city where I caught a bus to the Beijing Review compound. The time spent aboveground was depressing with visibility limited to a few hundred yards, the sky a disgusting brownish orange. People covered their mouths and nostrils with medical masks, scarves, newspapers or whatever they could get their hands on. You would have thought SARS or swine flu had broken out again.

As far as health risks go, the smog hasn’t been directly related to any deaths (that I know of or was able to find in online research), although I’m sure long-term exposure can result in a variety of ailments. When I was home from January to February the cough I’d developed while living in Beijing -- which I just assumed was because of my weak immune system, allergies or inability to adapt to city life -- vanished. Two days after returning to Beijing, that cough was back along with acute pains in my chest. It must be my foreign lungs, since most of my Chinese colleagues and friends seem immune to the pollution, or are much better at faking health.

These smoggy skies are the most depressing and annoying part about living in Beijing. At times it feels like living through the apocalypse, sans mushroom clouds and radioactive wastelands. I’m 24 and when the sky is brown I get short-winded walking up six flights of stairs to my apartment. That’s not because I’m overweight or out of shape -- I actually live a relatively healthy lifestyle due to a lack of fried foods, donuts and other delicacies of the Coal Region -- it’s because of the air. So maybe I’ll need another vacation, this time to an island in the south Pacific, sooner than I expected.

Home for the Chinese Holiday

With shovel in hand and Penn State winter cap on my head, I looked at the fluffy white sidewalk at the side of my house in Tamaqua. I’d been greeted that morning to three inches of snow. This was three inches on top of the roughly foot of snow that had been leftover from the snow showers we’d received throughout the winter.

My parents grumbled about the weekly winter weather with wishes that the cold season would come to a close. I, however, was euphoric. Snow, snow, glorious snow. It was a sensation I hadn’t experienced in my second home, Beijing, for close to a year. This winter in China has been cold with temperatures hovering around 10 degrees Fahrenheit but lacking of any snow. And I could see why – all the snow that should have fallen in Beijing had apparently been re-routed to Tamaqua and the rest of northeast Pennsylvania.

I’d forgotten how strenuous shoveling can get, but I was glad to be home. Back in China, it was the Spring Festival holiday, where the country’s population of 1.3 billion uplifts itself from its place of employment and journeys to hometowns across the country. Since all my Chinese co-workers and friends were visiting their families, I decided that I’d do the same and throw in a few weeks of vacation to make the trip home – 14 hours in the air – worth it. Vacationing in Tamaqua in winter, what a concept.

It had been close to a year and a half since I was home and in that time a lot had changed. My brother had graduated from high school, my cousin had a baby and most of my friends from college were now spread out over most of the United States. But a lot remained unchanged. Tamaqua, for the most part, was the same as I had left it. My Mom still had her big blue van. And my room was all but untouched, including my soft-as-a-cloud bed (my bed in Beijing is comparable to a rock complete with bumps of algae, or at the very least a few planks of wood).

The agenda for my three-week vacation was simple: I would do as little work as possible, eat as much American/Coal Region cuisine as possible, and just relax in front of my parent’s big screen TV. Life in Beijing is both tiring and lacking of any decent American meals, i.e. cheeseburgers, fried food and desserts. And Chinese television is non-sensical – even if I understood the language, I doubt I’d find the programs as interesting as medical dramas like House or anything on the Game Show Network.

As I sat on my couch for most of the three-weeks, pierogies and hoagies never tasted so good, and American television never as entertaining. Even the commercials, which for years had annoyed me, now seemed clever. I even considered buying the Shakeweight, now wildly popular, I’m assuming based on advertisements.

For gifts, I limited myself to buying a few red rabbits (it is the Year of the Rabbit, after all) and terracotta warrior statues. Miniature Mao Zedong trinkets didn’t go over so well the last time I was home – one of my friends proudly displayed his statue at work only to be asked if he was a communist – so any resemblances of the Chairman remained in China.

I also brought home bottles of baijiu, white rice wine considered the vodka of China, although the only similarities baijiu shares with vodka is the color. The taste is horrendous – imagine what battery acid would taste like; that’s baijiu -- and sits atop my list of worst tasting anythings ever list. With one sip, you feel it fall all the way into your stomach, like a bomb about to cause serious damage to your digestive system. And having given a few bottles to a few friends, I now think that I may have fewer friends in general. In my defense, I was only trying to share some Chinese culture.

Before I could say “halupki” my trip was over and I was China bound once more. I’d seen my family, visited friends in New York City, Washington, D.C., State College and everywhere in between, and stuffed my face with all the food I’d missed since moving abroad.

In retrospect, the three weeks at home may have been a bit much – the reverse culture shock I’d experienced at home had turned into a normal routine as I remembered how great America is and how inconvenient it can be to be an expat in Beijing. But it also helped renew the sense of adventure that is living in China and made me enthusiastic about the months and possible years ahead living abroad.


GROUP PHOTO: It's a tradition at every family gathering to have a photo of all the "kids," Taylors and Olseskis. These group photos were still taken while I was in China, but in my stead one of my cousins, Megan and Jonathan, would hold up a photo of me. It was nice to be home, in person, for this new photo


NEW FAMILY MEMBER: Last spring, my cousin Megan had a baby: Bentley. I was a little nervous meeting him for the first time, since he's had a whole year to get to know everyone else in the family and choose favorites but I think he liked me


LITTLE HELPER: Every time my dad or anyone in the family tries to do work, there's always a cat willing to lend a paw


CHRISTMAS IN FEBRUARY: My parents kept the Christmas tree up and even had a few presents for me since I haven't celebrated a proper Christmas in two years


THAT CAT: Our cat TC loves attention. I could tell he missed me, since he would follow me around the house to make sure I wasn't leaving