textures | tones

So once again, I had to leave the country to get on my next visa entry. It’s been so long that this is the last time I can leave the country and still come back. Hard to believe it will be a year already, but my visa expires at the end of August. I don’t even have a full two months on this entry. Since there is little calling on my time at the moment, and since cash is tight, I decided to take the train down. Buying tickets was quite easy. You can go to any of the four Beijing train stations or any of the specialty travel agent type places that just sell tickets and tell them what you want and they’ll see if they have it, and if they do, just give them cash. Right now, the trains are running on opposite schedules, Southbound trains on odd numbered days, Northbound trains on the evens. I paid just about 1400 RMB for both tickets, cheaper than the suggested price for the seats I got, but apparently not as cheap as you can get if you were willing to risk waiting a bit longer as they discount the tickets the closer you get to the day of travel. I got the “soft sleeper,” as mentioned before, which is a private room with 4 bunks. There are fancier “soft sleepers” with only 2 bunks and a private bathroom, and even worse “hard sleepers” with 6 bunks and no door to the compartment. Somewhere, though I didn’t see them, there should also have just been ordinary seats. The trip takes 25 hours down because there are a few stops at which you are not allowed to leave the train at all, and 24 hours up because it’s somehow non-stop…I took most of my photos through a very dirty train window, and managed very few photos indeed in Hong Kong proper because I was the guest of some family relatives who are fancy military officials and they insisted on taking care of me. Which was great, don’t get me wrong, and it rained a good bit while I was there. I’d like to think that since the focus this trip was so much on the journey, my photos of it are appropriate and that Hong Kong itself was but a brief layover between journeys.

These are photos of Tianjin. I went with my mother, Doug, and sister in the Summer of 2010 when they came to Beijing to visit. This was only my 2nd time visiting, the first being when the IFC went and sang the African Sanctus there. We hired a driver to take us around during the day and drove by the theater we sang in incidentally. Apparently it had burned down a bit ago and what was still standing there is a replica. We took the high speed train, which for anyone going to Tianjin I would suggest as it’s faster than anything else taking only half an hour and costing only the equivalent of 10 USD per way; comfortable, quiet, easy. Despite being a very hot day, I managed to get soaked multiple times when it started to thunderstorm. Otherwise, it would count as one of those whirlwind tours of all the hot spot:

• Some weird banking district.
• Some weird district called “Five Big Streets” where all the rich people used to live and whose fancy buildings and houses now belong to the Chinese government. Tianjin incidentally’s got this weird feeling of pride and anger over the communist party liberation that happened. Apparently, unlike Beijing where the government surrendered before the fighting could start because they felt it inappropriate to fight in the country’s capital, in Tianjin they fought it out tooth and nail. I really gotta learn more Chinese history though, it’s shameful…
• A big fancy indoor market of which there are apparently many.
• A place also called “GuLou” but in the ancient sense of the word “Gu.”
• We drove by a rebuilt kind of ancient part of the city that’s supposed to be “just like” how it was. Isn’t this what Beijing’s doing? It’s quite successful in Tianjin so what the heck right?
• The “Italy Town…”…

Photos to follow:

Maria and I took a walk today (it’s also her birthday!), along the Second Ring river and the little park that’s there and seems to run at least the length of this northern portion of the road, then got to Yonghegong, the Buddhist Lama temple in Beijing. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been here as I don’t think I came in 2005, the last time I was in Beijing. Maria had also been wanting to do more tourist type things so this will be a first in a series I expect of us hitting all the top destinations of culture and historical relevance. Though our expectations of good English especially in the museum type piece captions were grossly disappointed. Some of the photos were taken while on the way and after we left, but it’s in basic chronological order; just look out for the ones with temple type stuff and those will be when we were actually at Yonghegong.

So it’s been a very long time since we’ve posted. And it may be even longer until the next post. Nor will this post be very substantive as far as its text is concerned. To summarize though…

• Our visas still haven’t been processed. We need to leave the country again come March 15th.
• My mother, who was coming for the Chinese New Year and would have lived with us and thus applied lots of pressure on us to move before she got here, is no longer, not until June or so, so the pressure’s off, though we’re still looking for a new place.
• We have yet to find a new place, though Season’s Park, which Maria found, seems decent. The search will continue and there will be stories about the whole process now that Maria is doing it herself with English speaking agents.
• I’ve been busy like no other, working 13 hour days 7 days a week, but the restaurant is doing well, or at least better
• I’m having some trouble deciding what I want to do with my future in China as far as where or how I want to work
• It will soon be Chinese New Year, my first one that I will remember in China
• It’s snowing again, and this after I was told by everyone that it doesn’t snow in Beijing any more like my memories from my early childhood and was very disappointed by the news.
• To follow will be more detailed posts, I hope.
• And to immediately follow will be photos of my restaurant’s food! (Which everyone should come to…)

Seoul was lovely, though we both thought it looked very much like any major city in the US, specifically San Francisco. By the time our trip was over, we were calling it San Francisco. We were quite lucky with the weather, which was gorgeous. A funny story though, we had trouble finding trash cans while we were walking around. We finally realized that it was because the US President was visiting. And when we got back to Beijing, our road was closed…because the US President was visiting. He’s a stalker!!!!!!!! Obama’s stalking us!!!!!

This was all over a week ago by the way, the entire Korea trip; we’ve been sick.

It was an early snowfall this year. Apparently it’s good fortune. If it snows in November, it means the next years harvest will be bountiful, or something like that. It came on real fast, completely out of the blue. Incidentally, the mosquitoes are quite hearty and are STILL around somehow. And it looks like it’s going to snow again, later this week. Now I like the snow, and I like the cold. Any excuse to wear a nice wool coat is fine by me. But I wonder if this was all my fault, somehow. My father had told me that the past few years there had been little to NO snow in Beijing. I had been quite disappointed actually, because I remember from my childhood that the city was beautiful in the snow. Now that I actually show up though, and now that I actually need to get places, wouldn’t you know it, and the snow starts coming down :)

These photos were taken when we first went to visit the two campuses. Maria had arranged to sit in on some of the classes at both schools, and we wanted to be sure we knew where she had to go. It was also on the way to ZhongGuanCun where we tried and failed to purchase our electronics (see previous post). I’m posting on her behalf, because she uploaded the photos to her computer, and they never got to mine. It’s an interesting issue we’re having because we have different cameras and respective camera habits; hers go in her laptop, mine in mine. It kinda means our photos get segregated, which is not necessarily a good thing, and leads to such situations where I’m stuck grabbing these photos off of where she’s already uploaded them, only to re-upload them again. I’ve also ported over her captions. Speaking of which…how’s it look with them…? This is the first time I’m using them.

Either way, here we go:

So my father is partners with this company that has a dairy farm up in the northern part of Beijing. It’s very rural up there, very pretty, and apparently the government is trying to attract some big name companies to move in for the sake of saving the environment and all, with somewhat limited success. What happened was, we were moving out of my grandparents place and into our own. My father had offered the use of his old furnishings and such since he used to have two more apartments than he does now and had to consolidate such things. My cousin was kind enough to pick us up and drive us there and we figured we’d see the farm at the same time.

Um…so pictures to follow, and better blogging later.

So this time next week, we’ll be in China! Ah! It’s a little overwhelming actually. Exactly three days time left since it just became Friday. And what a Friday it’ll be. We have lots of last minute finalizing we need to do, plus packing. There’s lots of logistics and telephone related errands to run before we’re ready. The plus note is that the reason there were no posts this week is because we were on vacation! Our last one in the States. We went up to Carmel, where Maria had never gone, Monday morning, taking the scenic route up, and just got back this evening. Without going into it too much, it was a lovely time. It’s nice getting reassurance that we travel and vacation so well together. I’ll keep this brief because I want to upload some photos, but there’ll be more to say tomorrow.

This was a dinner I cooked for Maria while still at Bunker Hill Towers. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m in the process of re-importing all my images into my new blog now. I thought the meal was wonderful: pan fried eggplant, zucchini, and broccoli rabe stacked then baked with fresh mozzarella and basil on top, baked garlic bulbs with olive oil, basil, and balsamic vinegar, and toast points.

Edit: The baked garlic also had tofu in it, I just realized. And I should try to look up when these originally took place so that I can add them to the relevant posts.