tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24529539964188282262024-03-05T06:58:15.888-08:00Needles and NoodlesAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-1496999358404549262012-02-08T10:25:00.000-08:002012-02-08T10:25:50.689-08:00Tacoma BlogIt has been almost a year since Mike and I returned from China and we have started a new blog <a href="http://www.ruston-house.blogspot.com/">Ruston Farm</a>. Check it out to hear about our new exploits in Ruston/Tacoma! Also, if you miss our Chinese adventures, you can visit my work blog <a href="http://www.hawthorn-nh.com/blog/">Hawthorn Natural Health</a> and keep updated with Chinese medicine tips!<br />
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Ann<br />
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</div>Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-71761135696511934852010-12-01T21:22:00.000-08:002010-12-01T21:22:13.624-08:00So Long ChengduThe time here has gone quickly! I remember feeling doubtful that we would find enough to fill the long months stretched out ahead of us, but look at us now: we've been mapping out the few remaining days trying to fit in as much as we can, all the things we wished we'd done sooner. We've left Chengdu behind, so we offer a quick retrospective. It's a slow city, ready to take a break at the tea house and relax. Especially in the hours between lunch and dinner, but really throughout the day, both in tea houses and out on the sidewalk, we would see card tables set up - for cards, for mahjong - for hanging out. We acclimated readily to this lifestyle, and it was only toward the end of our stay when our friends Joey and Tracy came to visit that we finally learned the Sichuan rules of Mahjong and stayed up late into the night playing. Lazy though we may have been, we did take plenty of pictures of the city that we briefly lived in.<br />
Above all there was the food, littered with peppers and the mouth-watering zing of Sichuan peppercorns (hua jiao), covered in oil, garlic, ginger. We'll try to recreate our favorites at home, but how can we compare? We were once unsure about the numbing, buzzing feeling in our mouths from the hua jiao, but we quickly grew to love the taste. Even our favorite green onion pancake came with this local standard, crushed into the dough. <br />
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Here is a meal from the end of our trip at one of our first Chengdu restaurant discoveries. Their dry cooked bitter melon (top of the photo) was the best in the city. Moving clockwise we've got Pea Vines (qing chao wan dou dian), Pepper Chicken (la zi ji), and Garlic Sauce Eggplant (yu xiang qie zi). Really cheap and excellent food, something that we found in restaurants all over Chengdu.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another la zi ji. So many peppers!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9y23qjCZFw1cojOw2JrIu82A8LN6uiIvkqWpikGN1YCQZg-fApfVH9CVdmbY3OU2RMxzMWkN46_qGnDLeTHU2D4_o4tZtPMnk9WOa22sJCsLl5qV0alwUhleSSnTCUMA5bWkWOEnosp_s/s1600/225chengdutreats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9y23qjCZFw1cojOw2JrIu82A8LN6uiIvkqWpikGN1YCQZg-fApfVH9CVdmbY3OU2RMxzMWkN46_qGnDLeTHU2D4_o4tZtPMnk9WOa22sJCsLl5qV0alwUhleSSnTCUMA5bWkWOEnosp_s/s320/225chengdutreats.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Favorite treat!</td></tr>
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Across the street from us there was a small bakery (from a wonderful <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=luosha+dangao+bakery">chain</a> of Chinese bakeries) we would often buy coffee and wonderful treats. It was there that we perfected our ordering of the Americano (mei shi cafe) and experimented with many baked goods hoping that they didn't contain anything too strange (meat! dried shredded pork! little hot dogs! weird meat sandwiches that Mike actually liked!). Eventually we ended up with a few favorites including the chocolate treat above and mike's favorite three-pack, his "triumvirate bun". <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Got yak butter?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Chengdu is a stepping off point for travels to and from Tibet and as a result they have a wonderful Tibetan neighborhood. We went once out of curiosity, to browse around the Tibetan stores and see what was going on there, and we loved it! We found a strange little restaurant, really a tiny place, and although it took awhile we eventually sorted out which foods were palatable and which were not. This is our favorite tea, which was like a sweet Chai tea - on our first visit we made the mistake of ordering the salty yak butter tea. What a disaster! It had a thick layer of butter on every cup we poured, making it incredibly rich with the strange taste of yak. But the noodle soups with stewed meat in them were wonderful. I have to admit that the Tibet neighborhood was one of my favorites.<br />
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It took a very long time for Mike and I to learn to play Mahjong. It wasn't until our friends Joey and Tracy came to visit that we managed to learn the game. That was mainly due to their great hostel owner who was only too happy to show us. Chengdu Mahjong is much simpler then American Mahjong and we were able to learn quickly. All four of us spent an entire day drinking tea and playing. It was a lot of fun. After Joey and Tracy left Mike and I tried to figure out some two person games, but without as much success.<br />
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Greg Vision was one of the prominent landmarks visible from our apartment. There was always something going on with the building. First they stripped the building and then started to repaint. They replaced windows and lights down the sides of the building, each time setting up a platform hanging down from the roof. Mike and I were fascinated. Greg Vision was visible from all over our neighborhood, which made it a good landmark to find our apartment early on when we were frequently disoriented, finding our way around on the public buses (also, Ann maintains that the sign actually says "Crec Vison", but this is beside the point).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEkHuQtZxymYr2rSgbhjCXY17xzrL4iSNKutxmALaBsCaS4fFGgiMQqPssTh4OUITXtJOUrjdwhGnqF-X-BiW1nOtOHn5EXGJMia-IAdtRMC6evx0c4G95koBRUGhAIX-V34ShVn4FLcUM/s1600/224modestpanda.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEkHuQtZxymYr2rSgbhjCXY17xzrL4iSNKutxmALaBsCaS4fFGgiMQqPssTh4OUITXtJOUrjdwhGnqF-X-BiW1nOtOHn5EXGJMia-IAdtRMC6evx0c4G95koBRUGhAIX-V34ShVn4FLcUM/s320/224modestpanda.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Modest Panda</td></tr>
</tbody></table>The Chengdu pandas are amazing! We really enjoyed going to see them. You could get so close! Also, the panda restaurant served yam leaves, one of our favorite vegetables. An added bonus for a trip to the panda sanctuary. We went again with Joey and Tracy, and were just as entranced the second time around. <br />
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Here's the view from our window at evening rush hour (there's the Pacific Department Store, which the Greg Vision billboard sits atop). Traffic was terrible. Won't miss that. Though it did make for an exciting scene, watching the cars, pedestrians and scooters moving around down below.<br />
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We'll have to come back soon.Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-55739637088083919502010-11-28T07:15:00.001-08:002010-11-28T07:15:17.388-08:00The Epic Train Ride<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIzHmkKdO94Grx60ukfpYkYF2w2zqX6VDx512cqYNz-qklowqmD16Gam11ck77laLWEN2bQi8Cy8jl_mLe9obw22FyJKiR56o6fgCZEAY5J9l5dnztaH0gzRvTUoNuW15ioTJTSfeQk0Bs/s1600/213tickets-717389.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIzHmkKdO94Grx60ukfpYkYF2w2zqX6VDx512cqYNz-qklowqmD16Gam11ck77laLWEN2bQi8Cy8jl_mLe9obw22FyJKiR56o6fgCZEAY5J9l5dnztaH0gzRvTUoNuW15ioTJTSfeQk0Bs/s320/213tickets-717389.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544619463541499842" /></a></p>We came to the end of our stay in Luoyang and realized we needed to<br>sort out a way back to Chengdu. We had left the last leg of our trip<br>open, half for flexibility and half because we hadn't found any<br>especially cheap way home. We scoured Ctrip for flights from Xi'an to<br>Chengdu or, even better, from Luoyang to Chengdu. However,<br>unfortunately (sadly! terribly! woefully!) there was nothing at an<br>even remotely decent price. We debated flying to Chongqing (for still<br>more than we wanted to pay), spending the day there, and then taking a<br>short train home the next day, but that plan was nixed as too<br>complicated. And this is how the two of us found ourselves<br>desperately questioning a woman in the Luoyang train station on one<br>day's notice to find us a pair of beds for the overnight train back to<br>Chengdu. But our luck (and our trip so far had been lucky!) wasn't<br>destined to hold. No sleepers. None the night we wanted to leave and<br>none the night after. Nor were there any a day early, that very<br>night. What they did have, though, was hard seats. It's not as bad<br>as it sounds - hard seats still have cushions - they're just the<br>lowest class seat. And at least it's a level up from standing. None<br>of this would have even been an issue, but the train ride was over 17<br>hours and scheduled to leave Luoyang at 12:45 in the middle of the<br>night. But what options did we have? We snatched up the hard seats.<p>The Luoyang train station was a palace after the train station in<br>Xi'an, but filling the hours between dinner and a quarter to one in<br>the morning with everything already closed was a little tricky. We<br>were already off to a difficult start. We blinked away sleep sitting<br>in the crowded train station waiting hall, trying to make sure we<br>didn't doze off and miss the departure. That would have been<br>terrible. None of the signs were in English, so we were a little<br>nervous, but the train numbers were clear enough, and our train was<br>eventually announced and we went out to wait on the platform only a<br>few minutes behind schedule. There we stood, anxiously milling about<br>with 30 other people trying to guess the right place to stand for the<br>car number on our ticket. Once the train arrived everyone ran for the<br>car (it was like a cartoon, the whole crowd rushing in unison first<br>one way then the next - apparently we were all on car 7) and we shoved<br>our way onto the train. It was packed! It took us a good 20 minutes<br>to work our way down the car to our seats, waiting for those in front<br>of us, squeezing by people and the bags filling the aisles. Once<br>there (should we have known it would be like this?) we found a young<br>couple in our seats. No, wait, they explained. They had seats 42 and<br>43. Ours were 40 and 41, the two behind them, occupied by a pair of<br>grizzly old guys. We waved our tickets at them, but they pulled out a<br>pair of tickets of their own. Real tickets. For our seats. Our<br>grasp on the situation had never been strong, but now it looked like<br>things were slipping away from us. Ann wasn't happy, and I felt more<br>than a little responsible for our predicament. I had been the vocal<br>train advocate, and here we were, faced with sleeping in the aisle (as<br>several people we had already stepped past had been doing). What a<br>relief when a friendly passenger stepped in to sort through the<br>confusion. He examined our tickets and handed them back to us. Then<br>he took a look at the other pair's tickets and started talking to<br>them. I understood what he was saying: theirs were for the day<br>before, and it's likely enough that with the train just after midnight<br>they had thought that they were on the right train. They were pretty<br>hesitant to move, but our benefactor wouldn't let up until they had<br>given us the seats. Sadly, their luggage was still on the floor<br>under our new homestead. We pushed and rotated the bags in the<br>overhead to make room for our big backpack, but our two smaller bags<br>would spend the night in our laps. We slept, tried to sleep, cramped<br>and folded around our bags. The lights on our China train didn't dim,<br>the whole night through. We were surprised how wakeful everyone was!<br>The train was noisy with the shouts of passengers hanging out,<br>chatting away until well after 2 am. Someone had a radio playing much<br>too cheery music. As the night wore on the talk quieted down, but the<br>lights stayed on. We were pretty miserable, shifting positions to try<br>to stay comfortable, sleeping fitfully, regretting our bad decision.<p>The next morning things on the train started pretty early, even as<br>many of the passengers dozed away. Food carts started coming through<br>the aisles at 7 in the morning. I have no idea how they managed to<br>make it down those aisles with all the people asleep in them.<br>Actually, people were sleeping anywhere there was an open space. Bags<br>doubled as beds, pillows, the works. I even saw a guy curled up in<br>the metal sink! The space at the ends of the car was being slept in,<br>and between the cars (next to the bathrooms) was the de-facto smoking<br>area. I always had a hard time sorting out whether or not any of the<br>eight or ten men standing about smoking was also waiting to use the<br>bathroom. The food coming up the aisle smelled good, but it was too<br>dubious to tempt either of us. Instead we had a bit of our own<br>instant coffee (unlimited hot water at the tap at the back of the<br>car!) and some buns we'd packed in anticipation of the long journey.<br>Later an old Jacky Chan movie came up on the television and we watched<br>a bit. The guys that Mike and I had evicted from their seats were<br>able to shift to new seats as people got off the train and one of them<br>ended up across from us. He turned out to be quite friendly and<br>started chatting with us (he spoke no English at all). He pulled out<br>his snack bag and offered us each apples and held out his knife.<br>After I (Mike) bungled peeling the first one (Ann's apple) to general<br>consensus ("terrible!") from the crowd watching us, we got an<br>impromptu demonstration of our host's apple peeling skill. The rules<br>are: don't take off too much apple, don't touch the flesh with your<br>fingers (he did the whole thing moving his fingers down the<br>diminishing patch of skin until he held the bare apple by just the two<br>bits at the top and bottom), and come as close as you can to peeling<br>the skin in one single, beautiful coil. It was remarkable.<p>Ann and MikeAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-21656954277350027642010-11-27T01:39:00.001-08:002010-11-27T01:39:49.697-08:00Longmen Caves<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhxPiYWLIHLbCWsx1Mw_HTQQBCI5TrjqF0SO5PkpbFdag7QO6aJvggPoyBQcz7h5UtzkQlRLoBpbld574kmqmo34x95zZ_3FmaKn_m8xTa7BClaSt-wrinrwSVCXzxUB23gXNnnytQUchn/s1600/207luoyangview-789698.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhxPiYWLIHLbCWsx1Mw_HTQQBCI5TrjqF0SO5PkpbFdag7QO6aJvggPoyBQcz7h5UtzkQlRLoBpbld574kmqmo34x95zZ_3FmaKn_m8xTa7BClaSt-wrinrwSVCXzxUB23gXNnnytQUchn/s320/207luoyangview-789698.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544161931188295538" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXNMIJ9MAOyRxs4Ut0FOogtjpRQBctJgv2MYz4GMulhgivA-BBmUQMgutYhK1wJADq48IwzYHTomn5-44PB6PDLXB8wNqoGVWvQCIlFxhnYvx16bMAzUt3OHX63nsALEsD80e7WBuEezeY/s1600/208luoyangwalk-790899.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXNMIJ9MAOyRxs4Ut0FOogtjpRQBctJgv2MYz4GMulhgivA-BBmUQMgutYhK1wJADq48IwzYHTomn5-44PB6PDLXB8wNqoGVWvQCIlFxhnYvx16bMAzUt3OHX63nsALEsD80e7WBuEezeY/s320/208luoyangwalk-790899.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544161934434887746" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhImcv4sIit1lsQm5z3cEklesHpHBX3FD_dqUpayb2tUOPILTX5q2zKULswz0l6_LTdb1YTjPoiARGnajDdZ0-G9gbf8F76unqySRzpdIh0gzNUlYyxOd5YDGAL84J806DVFjSF96ObETWb/s1600/209longmen-792049.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhImcv4sIit1lsQm5z3cEklesHpHBX3FD_dqUpayb2tUOPILTX5q2zKULswz0l6_LTdb1YTjPoiARGnajDdZ0-G9gbf8F76unqySRzpdIh0gzNUlYyxOd5YDGAL84J806DVFjSF96ObETWb/s320/209longmen-792049.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544161938817322706" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5_fjCBIn45DuwkXqG1S3usCH_Bn-NdH6DfWcdUawlIuW3N_8vd5MtHbVE7Zlt5yNdRyG4sYY90HLk6wUOhLHyfuqrplruW0olEPMzBaHE_uaNSTU36_0P7DUpX4uYDi9NtnDWg7qPJA_a/s1600/210longmenpair-793335.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5_fjCBIn45DuwkXqG1S3usCH_Bn-NdH6DfWcdUawlIuW3N_8vd5MtHbVE7Zlt5yNdRyG4sYY90HLk6wUOhLHyfuqrplruW0olEPMzBaHE_uaNSTU36_0P7DUpX4uYDi9NtnDWg7qPJA_a/s320/210longmenpair-793335.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544161942647608258" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp_oFHKJxjOOovB1HpBUb2hw4m93DcSv5jLi6U40d7n3unYd6KBK1du78rq7f3IqlNlSbjiBetk9mDBOWFZ1qEJ9CTSO0-Ht1V3diqL9FC66oXuFlmz3XbVCkM6m7Ov3P2t4V8cLCHf2G8/s1600/211longmenview-794782.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp_oFHKJxjOOovB1HpBUb2hw4m93DcSv5jLi6U40d7n3unYd6KBK1du78rq7f3IqlNlSbjiBetk9mDBOWFZ1qEJ9CTSO0-Ht1V3diqL9FC66oXuFlmz3XbVCkM6m7Ov3P2t4V8cLCHf2G8/s320/211longmenview-794782.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544161946953104866" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEillsZKb0IgSERNC8qpjgavSZmQQ1SrfaigfJfNiHurOwvEQBXD_nP1L4GR2YdJ3-rQxnt5n7gRgbUnajiC_t_uCqVaaUvtxR0LBiQBn5XO9uDO-gUdXlmWoezMCIY4Am-CJ8lVRkhnnxLW/s1600/212longmenview-795566.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEillsZKb0IgSERNC8qpjgavSZmQQ1SrfaigfJfNiHurOwvEQBXD_nP1L4GR2YdJ3-rQxnt5n7gRgbUnajiC_t_uCqVaaUvtxR0LBiQBn5XO9uDO-gUdXlmWoezMCIY4Am-CJ8lVRkhnnxLW/s320/212longmenview-795566.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544161950785863938" /></a></p>Ay! We've been sitting on the wrap up for our long trip (Urumqi,<br>Lanzhou, Xi'an, Luoyang) for almost two weeks. Ann got in gear and<br>wrote up a pair of blog entries to finish the trip off, and here I am<br>editing and adding in my commentary. This will bring us almost up to<br>speed, and maybe tomorrow we'll finally catch up to where we are now.<br>So:<p>After a high speed train ride from Xi'an (90 minutes, 350 kilometers!)<br>we arrived in Luoyang tired, but feeling adventurous enough to take a<br>city bus to our hotel. After questioning some ladies at the train<br>station we found the right bus and got on. Feeling victorious we<br>chuckled to ourselves as the bus pulled out of the station,<br>congratulating each other on a job well done: taxi avoided. Luoyang<br>was off to a great start! But the bus made a turn we couldn't account<br>for, looking at the map, and didn't get back on track. It seemed to<br>be going the wrong direction, but we talked it over and felt sure the<br>ladies had steered us in the right direction. They had, after all,<br>understood what we were asking, discussed a little, and told us in<br>easy to understand Chinese which number bus to get on. Though we were<br>now also having doubts about the bus number, which was wrong if we<br>went by the yellow number spray painted onto the windshield, but right<br>if we went by the plastic reader board on the front of the bus. Maybe<br>we had arrived at the East Train Station instead of the one in the<br>center of town. But it began to dawn on us that we were in the<br>Luoyang suburbs. Panic. Mike talked to the driver. We had told him<br>our street initially, and he seemed confident enough that we were on<br>the right bus, but now the bus was packed with people and there was<br>clearly some confusion about what was what. We dejectedly got off the<br>bus and hailed a cab. Luckily, the cab ride was fairly short and we<br>managed to find the hotel easily enough (there were three Aviation<br>Hotels on the same street, but ours was the second we tried). We got<br>checked in and found ourselves with a room on the top floor! Spacious<br>room, no funny smells, beautiful views of the city - and it was the<br>cheapest place we stayed on the whole trip! (actually, Mike was upset<br>by the tower occupying a big chunk of our view with a huge glowing<br>television orb atop it playing advertisements and blooming flowers(?!)<br>through the night). Apparently requesting non-smoking had some perks,<br>and we were in the best room in the hotel!<p>All this adventuring had gotten us pretty hungry, so we set out to<br>find some dinner before going to bed. We managed to find a short run<br>of restaurants by the hotel and chose one based on the fact that it<br>appeared busy and looked nice. We were seated, given a pair of<br>picture-less menus, and quickly realized that we had no hope of<br>deciphering them. No familiar dishes. Not even categories we knew.<br>Desperate, we turned to our server for help, but (predictably) the<br>server spoke no English. We resorted to randomly picked dishes and<br>crossed our fingers that we wouldn't end up with anything too strange.<br> Unfortunately, that was not to be. Well, actually it wasn't so bad.<br>The first course was a bland soup (akin to flour water) with noodles.<br>Boring! Second was a kind of Da Pan Ji (chicken, peppers, red sauce,<br>noodles) with a lot of particularly spicy sauce. This was tasty, and<br>we could see the feet easily enough to steer clear of them. Sometimes<br>this kind of thing was all gizzards and hearts, but there was plenty<br>of meat in this one. Mike was mixing his boring-soup noodles in with<br>the sauce. But then we came to the head. Not even the head. Two<br>halves of a chicken head. Unsettling. Then there were pickled<br>veggies served alongside the food. And lastly we were served a giant<br>bowl of a sweet congee with some kind of delicious berry (Ann says<br>hawthorn) in it. It was sweet and tart and didn't really fit in with<br>the rest of the meal, but we liked it.<p>The next day we took the bus to the Longmen Caves (pictured!). It was<br>a piece of cake catching the city bus from our hotel all the way<br>there. We got there in the late afternoon, sunny, warm, a nice breeze<br>blowing. It was perfect. The walk to the caves was peaceful,<br>following a path along the river, under a long row of willow trees<br>(there was a second path from the bus stop, through an equally long<br>line of souvenir stalls, that we turned down in favor of the river<br>route). We passed through the North entrance and into the large<br>valley that makes up the site and started to explore. The caves<br>varied greatly in size, as did the carved Buddhas within. Some caves<br>had thousands of tiny carved figures. Some were massive. Stairs were<br>carved into the hillside, and we climbed about oohing and aahing among<br>the Chinese tourists (who were particularly friendly here). The day<br>was wonderfully warm and sunny so we took our time and eventually<br>caught an evening bus back into town.<p>Mike and AnnAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-64264975480736723362010-11-12T01:28:00.000-08:002010-11-12T01:28:38.060-08:00Journey to the Terracotta WarriorsThe day after our adventure around Xi'an's old wall, we slept in and purposefully opted not to take the 8:30 am tour bus that our too-chipper hotel liaison had suggested. We and our guidebook had better plans. After getting some much needed rest we headed toward the train station to take the bus to the Terracotta Warriors. Our spirits and hopes were high with plans for a bakery stop en route. Ann wanted coffee from the moment she woke up that morning. I wanted a snack. But we became increasingly desperate as we got closer to the bus station with no sign of a bakery. Unfortunately, it appeared to not be in the cards. Morale was low, but we pressed on.<br />
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Then, just as hope was almost lost we found a bakery! Bakeries in China have been our coffee source (Starbucks is here but it's obnoxious and expensive, in that order) when we aren't drinking instant. We headed in, purchased the aforementioned coffee and also grabbed some dubious looking baked goods for the road. The food situation at the site of the Terracotta Warriors was described by the guidebook as "diabolical". And readers who are worried that I didn't get my snack, fear not: we made a stop a short while later for pulled noodles.<br />
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The Xi'an Train station is crowded, messy, dirty even when compared to other Chinese train stations. The bathrooms are even worse (and should maybe be described as "diabolical"), hidden below ground among a tangle of what looked like cheap sleeping arrangements for stranded travelers. We will not speak of this again.<br />
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Despite the train station debacle, Mike and I managed to find our way to the bus outpost and (with a little asking around) found the correct bus relatively easily. It was pretty remarkable.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZCPHfr8p9poo2-9JJSJSRPD6iC1h6Og6FKue2NnXXySolwlPwo7aaWtkYnSndRtD2uI8XAcw7XK6UUOeNEMFPfQ4iIPHbjPL2fXVqn9_3XHFqGi5MQs9MPGGuqaWxjGWP4j3YyTIYzfjS/s1600/200_terpit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZCPHfr8p9poo2-9JJSJSRPD6iC1h6Og6FKue2NnXXySolwlPwo7aaWtkYnSndRtD2uI8XAcw7XK6UUOeNEMFPfQ4iIPHbjPL2fXVqn9_3XHFqGi5MQs9MPGGuqaWxjGWP4j3YyTIYzfjS/s320/200_terpit.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The first pit with the largest number of warriors.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>The museum that houses the terracotta warriors is amazing. It's a massive hangar stretching out over the statues which are displayed in-place, right where they were discovered and where the excavation still goes on. The result is that there appears to be continuing work on the site (museums are usually such static things!) as new objects are unearthed and statue fragments are pieced together. Everything involved is on such a large scale! The warriors themselves are complex - the bodies were mass produced (well before what I had thought of as the "invention" of interchangeable parts!), and the heads and hands were individually made for each statue.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIElCRpPO74cwnsUs5559Bl7z3QOaJY4MCbitjwCEkN7TN6YNJfujHf1b9JNm88GbjIcD0ryXSmtv05xuOAR-XDaDKXBLJmwUIupsynRFwLkmChPQkkgZWZoBFVZ4FHBZebwXRsomIWlCG/s1600/201-TERrepair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIElCRpPO74cwnsUs5559Bl7z3QOaJY4MCbitjwCEkN7TN6YNJfujHf1b9JNm88GbjIcD0ryXSmtv05xuOAR-XDaDKXBLJmwUIupsynRFwLkmChPQkkgZWZoBFVZ4FHBZebwXRsomIWlCG/s320/201-TERrepair.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Although the bases are largely similar, the heads were individually made, each with its own facial features and expression. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chicken on the street!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0LqEOBhumRbsGFgsLtJ1gt7C_28_mowcR8mbo3UAjtsoiY_t94yhg3zDosDtzE_KhK_CkgUTfI0Az7PsRV8AQgDow8Wa_VNg32Bs03flQ0dB0f6FYX7bkYvDBFVbi8sMNTeiXgNZSqcql/s1600/204_nightmarket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0LqEOBhumRbsGFgsLtJ1gt7C_28_mowcR8mbo3UAjtsoiY_t94yhg3zDosDtzE_KhK_CkgUTfI0Az7PsRV8AQgDow8Wa_VNg32Bs03flQ0dB0f6FYX7bkYvDBFVbi8sMNTeiXgNZSqcql/s320/204_nightmarket.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Night market</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Night market</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bell tower at night</td></tr>
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Ann and MikeAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-8803745106349135762010-11-09T05:52:00.000-08:002010-11-09T05:52:30.193-08:00In Which Ann and Mike Try to Conquer Xi'an and Decide to Survey the City from its Walls Instead.After cold Lanzhou Ann was very pleased to arrive in a decidedly warmer Xi'an. Mike thinks the Lanzhou weather was perfect. Transportation was much easier (although because of traffic, also slower) and the airport shuttle bus served us well. There was some relatively minor hotel debacle for our first night, but we rose the following morning (relatively) early and with a keen sense of adventure. We decided to storm the city.<br />
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Our hotel liaison cornered us before we could even get out the door. She not only tried to sell us several expensive tour packages, but was obscenely chipper, and told several bad jokes in English (making fun of how they say "car" is Boston just isn't the same if you already speak heavily accented English). Despite these serious marks against her, we took her advice and began our attack by heading out to Xi'an's restored wall to survey the city.<br />
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The wall is huge.<br />
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Really, very large. We decided to rent bikes and ride around the entire city on top of the wall. I (Ann) refused to ride a tandem bicycle, so we waited for some single bikes to return from their circuit before setting off on our own.<br />
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I think that Mike really enjoyed his bike despite the fact that it was tiny and it was impossible to adjust the seat.<br />
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I have to admit that I also loved mine. It was so nice to travel so quickly!<br />
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I refused to leave my bike. Even for pictures.<br />
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Fine.<br />
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Mike found the panorama button on the camera.<br />
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From one corner of the wall, facing away from the center of town, onto a moat and a great park!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDY61C-FTKVa7IAEtgqy-nA1SasMd2nvmtAtqinbcvEoUO5Tl4xaGJPUyuT70MTGJydcBMMMKaPSJff4RPOeSylsfdbrP2aA0nmcnLCLWdkVwZd2c5VzgIFQsLZuNwjAb7bwpyNbc2mWQV/s1600/107_chickens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDY61C-FTKVa7IAEtgqy-nA1SasMd2nvmtAtqinbcvEoUO5Tl4xaGJPUyuT70MTGJydcBMMMKaPSJff4RPOeSylsfdbrP2aA0nmcnLCLWdkVwZd2c5VzgIFQsLZuNwjAb7bwpyNbc2mWQV/s320/107_chickens.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chickens!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>After our wall adventure (which took an hour and 1/2! Surprising!) we headed towards Xi'an's Muslim neighborhood. And delicious food! Xi'an has a specialty dish that starts with you, the soup eater (drinker?) tearing up a few tough old pieces of bread into a pile of rough bread crumbs. Then some magic is done, and you get back a soup with beef broth, hunks of meat, vegetables, and all of those bread bits in it! It was a great meal, but Ann was only moderately impressed. Her heart (stomach) had been left in Urumqi (and the next night we scoured the Muslim quarter until we found somewhere with pilaf for her). But after our great soups we walked through a night market that was just ramping up, bought a few little things, and headed back to our hotel. Overall, a great day.<br />
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Next adventure: terracotta warriors.<br />
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Ann and MikeAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-41598672968248815002010-11-09T05:00:00.000-08:002010-11-09T05:01:56.962-08:00Noodles!After Urumqi we journeyed to the home of hand pulled noodles: Lanzhou. Actually, it wasn't quite so simple. We had an unplanned, very lengthy delay. We cabbed it to the airport to catch our flight, both horrified and relieved that the regular cab fare was half what we had paid to get taken into town (cabs that don't turn on the meter always turn out badly). Taxi rides in China are never straightforward. There is always something unexpected happening, and our not being able to speak Chinese inevitably just makes things more of a mess. This cabdriver actually hadn't started the meter at first, but about a block in I pointed this out to him and he dutifully flipped it on. Then halfway to the airport he started chatting with us, and was quite firm about wanting to know when our plane was due to leave. I still wasn't sure that he wasn't going to try driving us all over town, and at that point we had already passed the landmarks by which I had known we were going in the right direction, so I told him 2:00 (I think we had a 2:45 departure). He pulled over almost immediately at a gas station off the highway saying he would just be a minute or two. Maybe he had been explaining this to us the whole time? Was this what we had been chatting about? Wasn't the taxi meter running? Well, it didn't matter in the end - was the gas station closed? out of gas? it was noon, after all - neither of these things seemed very likely, but after a quick shouted exchange between the cabdriver and a gas station attendant we drove off without having even fully stopped moving. The airport, of course, presented more problems. Though we knew our airline (Air China), we did not know the Chinese for our airline (still don't), and couldn't answer simple questions about which terminal we were flying out of. We had no idea! Luckily, the driver was redeeming his non-meter-starting character, and took pity on us. Between the three of us, we were able to ask around until we made it to the right terminal. Finally at the right place we checked into our flight only to find that it had been delayed 6 hours. Boozh! The Urumqi airport entertainment options are slim to none: one magazine/snack stand and a single coffee shop that looked like it had instant coffee and a jug of hot water. Chairs? 2. Occupied. Uncomfortable window seating? Also occupied. We debated our options, and settled on taking the bus back into town for the day. And the plan worked! Urumqi was great the second time around! We had yet another pilaf lunch (our third in three days), and settled in at a coffee shop to wait out the afternoon. It was on the free coffee shop internet that we discovered that our plane had been delayed yet again, sending us to our favorite night market for dinner (kebabs and noodles) before we nabbed our second cab of the day and, at just before midnight, found ourselves on a plane and headed to Lanzhou.<br />
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Unfortunately, the delayed flight meant that our time in Lanzhou would be significantly shortened. We did manage to find great noodles, another fun night market and a bad Xinjiang restaurant (you can see Ann was missing Urumqi already).<br />
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This is the "chocolate" that I (Ann) bought on the way home from our exploration of the Lanzhou night market. I was mainly attracted to it by the fact that it seemed to represent chocolate (Enõn!) and that it was cheap (3 kuai). Unfortunately, the texture more closely resembled crumbling cement and I decided that it would probably better serve society structurally. In a trash pile.<br />
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Seeing these pictures I realize that we both look tired. We can attribute this two causes. One: we didn't get to our hotel until 3am the night before. The airport is over an hour outside of town, and we made this trip in the middle of the night. Actually, we weren't even the only ones in the hotel lobby when we got there - on the seventh floor of our hotel (and you could hear the music in the elevator as it rolled by) there was a <a href="http://www.google.com/images?q=ktv">KTV</a> place, and a gaggle of girls fluttered out as we walked in. But reason Two: we booked a hotel right next to the train depot. We knew there were train noises, we had read the hotel reviews mentioning them. But we foolishly thought that we could sleep through it. Wrong. You know that dinging noise that a train crossing makes? Well, we heard that. All night. Along with really loud train horns. I'm left with a profound respect for the hobos who sleep in train yards or train cars or along train tracks under bridges. It's a noisy world.<br />
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Ann and Mike <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-64464405217075286862010-11-04T07:02:00.000-07:002010-11-04T07:02:21.373-07:00UrumqiAhh.... Urumqi! My favorite. The people are friendly, the food is delicious, and there is such distraction! It's an impressive city.<br />
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Mike and I left early Sunday to fly from Chengdu to Urumqi. I was excited because Xinjiang food (Xinjiang is the province out West in which Urumqi lies) was one of my favorite things to eat back in Shanghai, and we haven't found anywhere in Chengdu that serves it. I was thrilled (of course) at the thought of three Xinjiang meals a day in this Northwestern city.<br />
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The view during the flight over was incredible. Lots of desert, mountains, long stretches of snow. We could tell that we were going to a place that was different from the rest of China that we had visited so far.<br />
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When we arrived we were surprised at the large number of outdoor markets and the different kinds of fruits and nuts that they were selling These markets were everywhere and they sold not only dried fruit and nuts, but also all sorts of breads. We made it a habit to go explore them every morning and get a sampling of different kinds of breads for breakfast. It was delicious!<br />
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The clothing markets were crazy! Very crowded and for good reason: the prices were inexplicably much cheaper than anything else we've seen. At one point we walked around behind one of the large markets trying to take a shortcut to the Xinjiang Museum (the desert has preserved bodies almost 4000 years old, and they've got several at the museum!) and we saw a long line of trucks snaking down a side road, each of which loaded down with sacks and sacks of clothes, shoes, wallets, trinkets - I don't know how they're able to sell like that, but they've got throngs of people buying.<br />
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A different day we ventured farther south looking for some markets mentioned in the guidebook. These markets were filled with stalls selling things more traditional to the local Uyghur culture. They had carpets, knives, spices, jewelry, amazing instruments and other things that Mike and I thought of as Middle Eastern. <br />
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It was beautiful the whole time we were there and although it was a bit chilly we had a great time walking around and exploring. <br />
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Here I am after a long day of walking around with two of the local drinks: wine (a sweet red wine that from pictures we saw in the airplane magazine (excellent resource) we think may have been ice wine) and date juice (I want to call it Jujube Juice, but Ann is vetoing. "It's a date!"). The date juice (da zao juice) was a bit too sweet for my (Ann's!) taste, but the wine was great.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTtPAem325ioybecSLplrJEIRssQztb_OOHwuJviZtAOqHF79v402bi9ZP_1GB0snIkOM2r0FKcwjBtIhB2eijUVZqCqzhbgabv22NUD-vrUSPC51vgmV0lB46m94DEC4S8eBxPAuADYdX/s1600/100_yum.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTtPAem325ioybecSLplrJEIRssQztb_OOHwuJviZtAOqHF79v402bi9ZP_1GB0snIkOM2r0FKcwjBtIhB2eijUVZqCqzhbgabv22NUD-vrUSPC51vgmV0lB46m94DEC4S8eBxPAuADYdX/s320/100_yum.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Ahhh....yes...this is one of our favorites. This pilaf is available everywhere during lunch and dinner. Both Mike and I would get a huge plate and lots of tea for just 24 RMB. Amazing. Actually, we couldn't break the bank here if we were trying - none of our meals cost more than 40 kuai (that's $6) for the two of us, and most fell into that 24-30 range. <br />
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Generally served with these great pickled vegetables (julienned yellow and orange carrot, sometimes a bit of cabbage, a little spicy, a little vinegary) to go on top of the pilaf. Also very tasty.<br />
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Pilaf is everywhere and in the morning you can see people preparing it for lunchtime. We had our eating routine: pilaf for lunch and then noodles and skewers (sometimes stew served on bread!) for dinner. The skewers are Ann's (my!) favorite and incredibly delicious. People eat much later in Urumqi which is much more in tune with our eating habits and worked out very well. Restaurants are crowded at all hours, and we often found ourselves sharing the table with some locals. Our last day there we were lucky enough to share with someone who spoke English and we had a great time talking to his group (via him) about Urumqi and Xinjiang. Then when it came time to pay and the cashier was ringing us up for the wrong things, the woman at our table stepped in and rescued us (calling over to him to tell him what we had eaten).<br />
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Mike and AnnAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-43884611088935202482010-10-20T00:05:00.000-07:002010-10-20T00:05:27.408-07:00Waffles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxrW-nVlV83Bswm8GLBLrz6x6l5pC3rdPJi2CG5dosCqXkd6ogRw1BVA91HNrDDRHvvwvz-oTXWikLRBjpe2w' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
Our trip to Hong Kong was a success, one we intend to celebrate with waffles. Ha ha ha! Look at us laugh at this waffle!<br />
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AnnAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-89090155968712157692010-10-13T07:56:00.000-07:002010-10-13T07:56:13.103-07:00Another Reason that Pandas are Great.Ann and Mike (it's hard to pick good pronouns when we're both writing) didn't make it to the panda sanctuary until a little before two in the afternoon. We had learned from the guidebook that pandas get fed at 10am and don't do much after but sleep - but we operate in reverse! We sleep until ten, then eat and begin to do things. The bus ride was long (and would have been logistically quite challenging had google maps not come to the rescue with a fully functional bus-routes search for Chengdu) and we figured it would be like the zoo: maybe some pandas, probably asleep. But not only were the pandas awake, they were romping about! Okay, "panda romping" consists mostly of laying on the ground eating, or sitting around scratching (or staring dejectedly over the railing? I don't know what that was about.) but even this leaves us totally entranced. You see the videos: pandas are amazing.<br />
The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding ("Welcome to Chengdu, the home town of pandas. The Charm of China, the Cradle of Pandas." (But it's not creepy! It's great!)) is split up into various panda enclosures by panda age (with an additional area for Red Pandas, which are only distantly related to Giant Pandas). The first place we visited was the adolescent panda enclosure, and they were mostly laying around eating. Second was adult pandas. It was impressive how close we could get to them - there's just a low wall below which the pandas are hanging out, snacking, pooping, etc. And they're totally indifferent to the gawking tourists (even the one woman who repeatedly shrieked and clapped at them. I winced. Pandas didn't even notice). <br />
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After the adults we trooped up a long series of stone steps to the Panda Nursery. There were five baby pandas, eight to twelve weeks old, and impossibly cute (No pictures allowed! Of the cutest thing in the whole sanctuary!) They were already pretty big (20-30lbs?), fuzzy black and white, laying about yawning, stretching, lazily snoozing up against each other. Except for the one whose turn it was to be 'pooped' by the zoo keeper, who diligently rubbed its stomach with a washcloth while holding it over a garbage bin. Cute!<br />
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Ann's favorites, though, were the one year olds. We visited their spot last, and the four that we saw were tumbling around, wrestling with each other, climbing all over their wood structures, and getting bathed and fed bamboo shoots by a keeper. They were completely uncoordinated, frequently falling off their platform, and even sliding down the little gully at the edge of their enclosure to the foot of the wall we all watched from. Clumsy pandas! <br />
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Overall, it was a great day.<br />
<br />
Ann and Mike<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dy-4DmHsl9a0SNjllXnGtdDuHlT-Ng3J6TNbJeGlZRW_EGv0ymZOztzlttO56kP5b7RwFFh8FpB1bCL01005g' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-87877805737288497302010-10-12T22:31:00.000-07:002010-10-12T22:31:46.684-07:00Pandas!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwPslCTYnZwKYErNVuh22iIEdsMkDnXbJwKGs5m2O7txR0iHTO4CZfjCA-YpeP9dh33Nz-17RkJ0yRd3vzHpA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-35623959594064385072010-10-10T00:44:00.001-07:002010-10-10T00:44:56.352-07:00Chengdu, Sichuan<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZh9tQbPLNPx7VG_OecXF8kyX6uY4l4pg7eFEUA-tmdSG5sdPAte6TR_5AWlRPZ3wqFxx6pgtaJClah9sewmne78euaTl7y0LzEvHeF6Lsl2WeHtAPqoz4I6_2ijZJt-q1svWGnpbo8Fv/s1600/84_haibaochengdu-796353.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZh9tQbPLNPx7VG_OecXF8kyX6uY4l4pg7eFEUA-tmdSG5sdPAte6TR_5AWlRPZ3wqFxx6pgtaJClah9sewmne78euaTl7y0LzEvHeF6Lsl2WeHtAPqoz4I6_2ijZJt-q1svWGnpbo8Fv/s320/84_haibaochengdu-796353.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526320230800215362" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglmdgwYn-iI97PfnCf02ncosz6yQIiGEvGSRHY_8-X0vWADpijnBhvbCyBLtT_zVKtGSLZThH43nHSq508opxufcctg_NypcVmp4jhXQtKWG-3NAcvV6ZgF7_UEkGPBq7dPmVL0_Fh_YtJ/s1600/85_pandacig-703266.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglmdgwYn-iI97PfnCf02ncosz6yQIiGEvGSRHY_8-X0vWADpijnBhvbCyBLtT_zVKtGSLZThH43nHSq508opxufcctg_NypcVmp4jhXQtKWG-3NAcvV6ZgF7_UEkGPBq7dPmVL0_Fh_YtJ/s320/85_pandacig-703266.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526320261533537794" /></a></p>Mike and I arrived in Chengdu ready for some delicious spicy Sichuan<br>food and pandas, and Chengdu has delivered! Ann was infuriated by Hot<br>Pot chili oil splashing on her new dress ("I was! Stupid hot pot. It<br>wasn't even that tasty"), I was enchanted by the crispy/tender combo<br>of my favorite vegetable, Bitter Melon, and we both have been shocked<br>by the vast number of fancy pastry shops here - orders of magnitude<br>more than there are in Shanghai. I mean, sometimes you just want some<br>tasty vegetable baozi for breakfast, and those are hard to come by<br>now, but I can hardly walk down the street without tripping over sweet<br>buns (tasty), cream-topped coffee dusted custard things (delicious!)<br>and baguettes to rival those made daily at Safeway (a side note: no<br>pastry purchase is safe from the threat of odd, unanticipated savory<br>items lurking inside. Does this have fish in it? Why is the<br>character for fish in its label on the display case? I'm not buying<br>this fucking fish bun!).<p>We were dismayed yesterday when we spotted a number of Hai Bao here.<br>They've broken through the Shanghai quarantine. Or perhaps there has<br>been a Hai Bao forced migration. But the Hai Bao do seem to have<br>maintained their upbeat demeanor. One question answered! They put<br>them to work selling pastries.<p>Chengdu: home to Panda everything! This includes: signs, posters,<br>toilet seat stickers, taxi logos, taxi hood decorations, trash can<br>decorations, a clothing line ("Hi Panda", at <a href="http://www.hipanda.org">http://www.hipanda.org</a>),<br>and cigarettes. I didn't know pandas smoked, but their cigarettes<br>come in gold boxes! Pretty swank! More to come.<p>Ann and MikeAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-32664231448313196642010-10-04T02:35:00.000-07:002010-10-04T02:36:02.684-07:00Suzhou: This time with Gardens!<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPmnH25NJyiYx8E_dJKjTIC9nx4tbHNNbFaheGuFMvv3hBXxokUGc4TtzUgPprkfPhPPku_A7rLmMg0SaDwBkBFEoTiQsXsSYjKpdpf9YYNT5ijA6ce4sEMeqCm-Rztgkf2g3oq6a0Pktn/s1600/75_Sgarden1-762685.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPmnH25NJyiYx8E_dJKjTIC9nx4tbHNNbFaheGuFMvv3hBXxokUGc4TtzUgPprkfPhPPku_A7rLmMg0SaDwBkBFEoTiQsXsSYjKpdpf9YYNT5ijA6ce4sEMeqCm-Rztgkf2g3oq6a0Pktn/s320/75_Sgarden1-762685.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524122356607406786" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdLmmsZo7_YOtWnOk7qrB_QShlOsrOSu2O5gVo3I_1sbL359DA9qcDPAV_7qpOnOSqeSvZuguJVLadxyDDW40t6R6yCd4sWsV71BPmlZOFbEON2nlqa3C6f1-oX_rkfQcogpu8vIJLIKsf/s1600/76_Sg1sleep-763682.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdLmmsZo7_YOtWnOk7qrB_QShlOsrOSu2O5gVo3I_1sbL359DA9qcDPAV_7qpOnOSqeSvZuguJVLadxyDDW40t6R6yCd4sWsV71BPmlZOFbEON2nlqa3C6f1-oX_rkfQcogpu8vIJLIKsf/s320/76_Sg1sleep-763682.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524122354286058178" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7SQ2IkvIEl03Wsa634IOZ5QovLfnb14z2URoq5XAirKk8r3YGL9tYIj_kHcRrsbTZam2X8GV4NQKHtJBfsYAJHqGC0bh_KDfBIxVzTrTgb8PNUh7LlJEbryIuCSii_ZdcT59u-WLTIpLU/s1600/77_Sg1table-764506.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7SQ2IkvIEl03Wsa634IOZ5QovLfnb14z2URoq5XAirKk8r3YGL9tYIj_kHcRrsbTZam2X8GV4NQKHtJBfsYAJHqGC0bh_KDfBIxVzTrTgb8PNUh7LlJEbryIuCSii_ZdcT59u-WLTIpLU/s320/77_Sg1table-764506.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524122360653352530" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhExc0vrtMUjiMHic48N0jNivVvGFfqnKZNOe-FPVMIY567VjaaALXISJW-p433ZSXo9LloiLVD9GhP6Wx_b3enssLzFsc6HePjM81lyFJ4fvRnqSf3X6xVj_l0a48LOU4V1Nnr8auNPF-O/s1600/78_suzhousites-766616.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhExc0vrtMUjiMHic48N0jNivVvGFfqnKZNOe-FPVMIY567VjaaALXISJW-p433ZSXo9LloiLVD9GhP6Wx_b3enssLzFsc6HePjM81lyFJ4fvRnqSf3X6xVj_l0a48LOU4V1Nnr8auNPF-O/s320/78_suzhousites-766616.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524122366609207906" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPYuXt_O1l4HNr_vxd_U_rsPaeVmi1tjrBb9myLczGnzTgmZ39KGwF5PA6Z94Z8KjSuSoXpR3b56amfzVWO41WgiC6SZfBoq-c7GBhr1Gg3eAhdZUo2dg1si6L3d7Nsb-FPdAIrrWbiLFn/s1600/79_Ssilkworms-767299.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPYuXt_O1l4HNr_vxd_U_rsPaeVmi1tjrBb9myLczGnzTgmZ39KGwF5PA6Z94Z8KjSuSoXpR3b56amfzVWO41WgiC6SZfBoq-c7GBhr1Gg3eAhdZUo2dg1si6L3d7Nsb-FPdAIrrWbiLFn/s320/79_Ssilkworms-767299.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524122371239364002" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJrSHDFlr3FZLXtFa4fVvP2HsRrUmi-tSPqbU-uONz8mb8WB06secKZgJbEPXU_6sR5IgkTuSUNMeBnyJ16BfF4ZI70yspgMvyJyvPdhTHfNYWAduWyF7Ze7nXMpSua0qgTUDUo1BgAMj/s1600/80_Sweaving-768089.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJrSHDFlr3FZLXtFa4fVvP2HsRrUmi-tSPqbU-uONz8mb8WB06secKZgJbEPXU_6sR5IgkTuSUNMeBnyJ16BfF4ZI70yspgMvyJyvPdhTHfNYWAduWyF7Ze7nXMpSua0qgTUDUo1BgAMj/s320/80_Sweaving-768089.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524122376384100754" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8cpk2wISGpIkZjIqQR9GJqT9XAv_5eYTJG0dDHgZX3vw1wZzacbCCzu5mQL8VDyrK564z3ap6TtRA4cK0B510pvkaz1TQojZh-iEQztd_eDqVAZMod4b5COmsMyYufD6oCBAi_NO3RhIq/s1600/81_Sg2Ann-768873.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8cpk2wISGpIkZjIqQR9GJqT9XAv_5eYTJG0dDHgZX3vw1wZzacbCCzu5mQL8VDyrK564z3ap6TtRA4cK0B510pvkaz1TQojZh-iEQztd_eDqVAZMod4b5COmsMyYufD6oCBAi_NO3RhIq/s320/81_Sg2Ann-768873.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524122382047596962" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNv8OcssSIC7rYvKeIHbwSGNSx1tH-_6ahJGlK80MUajsy9_Golkhg96er2vabO7g8s_QG0nXlSGpvm2tkVKcIcnYjB5Mq64n6jEqhRBFvFR-MrLrGILZkxOq4tLBbIg_x26-kUi-pC7Ml/s1600/82_Sg2Mike_2-769650.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNv8OcssSIC7rYvKeIHbwSGNSx1tH-_6ahJGlK80MUajsy9_Golkhg96er2vabO7g8s_QG0nXlSGpvm2tkVKcIcnYjB5Mq64n6jEqhRBFvFR-MrLrGILZkxOq4tLBbIg_x26-kUi-pC7Ml/s320/82_Sg2Mike_2-769650.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524122379966968690" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipxgC9S4FMSKmbQG0d1gMVHeVq5DQJl1w5moQ8KH06xasLBUDukAuCKmNg8d990gqSMVrCRKE7SwfJJjSQd9EFh5gj_yFZvH8ITqy_CXcuXlNZDL3X31pqJCN2-cDk2H3qlXK6g85z9gdu/s1600/83_Sg2-770360.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipxgC9S4FMSKmbQG0d1gMVHeVq5DQJl1w5moQ8KH06xasLBUDukAuCKmNg8d990gqSMVrCRKE7SwfJJjSQd9EFh5gj_yFZvH8ITqy_CXcuXlNZDL3X31pqJCN2-cDk2H3qlXK6g85z9gdu/s320/83_Sg2-770360.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524122386692888578" /></a></p>Yes, yes. We did actually make it to a few gardens.<p>Yi Yuan<br>The first was very quiet and one of the most relaxing. There were a<br>few other people there, mostly playing cards or actually sleeping,<br>like the guy in the second photo. Mike and I found a nice table and<br>sat down and read for about an hour. It was really nice to be in the<br>city but have this peaceful setting to relax in. This garden also had<br>the great feature of being very close to our hotel. Always a nice<br>bonus.<p>Beisi Ta<br>A giant pagoda that was apparently a favorite of Marco Polo. At one<br>time it was 11 stories, but now it just has 9. Although we<br>contemplated climbing to the top, Mike and I were scared off by the<br>crowds and quickly scurried to the the silk museum, like hungry grubs<br>in search of a mulberry leaf.<p>Silk Museum<br>The best part about the whole museum was the live silkworms! You<br>could hear them munching away noisily at the mulberry leaves. There<br>is a very odd, creepy mannequin holding the silkworm basket. She<br>tricks you into thinking that they aren't alive. Then when you lean<br>in really close you can see that they are moving and hear them eating!<br> It is pretty amazing. There were also several incredible looms and<br>some women using one. The museum sells the silk pieces that they<br>make, but they were a bit out of our price range.<p>Ou Yuan (The Couples' Garden)<br>The second garden was larger and very beautiful. Unfortunately we<br>picked the first day of October, the beginning of a mega-holiday for<br>China, and were inundated with noisy tour groups and guides noisily<br>lecturing through their megaphones! We snuck off to the far corner of<br>the garden, relatively quiet after the rest, to sit and relax.<p>AnnAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-39549598319156176352010-10-04T01:23:00.001-07:002010-10-04T01:23:24.929-07:00Suzhou: delicious West China food!<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkqEoSeH9VSLCWx4VkbtrPwzUYu0CvmzFmen_RiAa6XuN_4_T4z9GVBUJ88UQqErIYH097hKYqV_8cc946zjxAIcTnfBzLqQ0PhA3mMLjWJ1ivu4-0_Ie6lPPzB3OoZB8X_dJeOgRd4KJY/s1600/70_suzhouWchina-704930.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkqEoSeH9VSLCWx4VkbtrPwzUYu0CvmzFmen_RiAa6XuN_4_T4z9GVBUJ88UQqErIYH097hKYqV_8cc946zjxAIcTnfBzLqQ0PhA3mMLjWJ1ivu4-0_Ie6lPPzB3OoZB8X_dJeOgRd4KJY/s320/70_suzhouWchina-704930.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524103639380314626" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPgkXkvN-nZIvkj3b6XD-OK_GO41UY5uy26vWbLZ4cUNXRUeQhuF0RmJYKKWIU1wtk4gwvhpcxTKnkrz_MZLk-5niKTCpmNej_mMJGhZdXbFfYff7dY9Ig9aHRXhjvOjP10tc2rn-0nLWp/s1600/70_suzhouWmike-705809.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPgkXkvN-nZIvkj3b6XD-OK_GO41UY5uy26vWbLZ4cUNXRUeQhuF0RmJYKKWIU1wtk4gwvhpcxTKnkrz_MZLk-5niKTCpmNej_mMJGhZdXbFfYff7dY9Ig9aHRXhjvOjP10tc2rn-0nLWp/s320/70_suzhouWmike-705809.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524103638297265618" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe_zzSxN9CmTM64brGdvsjZHVuaw3-PNSUwEpCVe9Jf3gByVjR7YbWmcQrtV8Hh4h6OM7PahG3VxSp6K3smk4YhfIqC9saQwa12gOU6Fbys_Rvks8FVA1C90_izIrhhCSUxYtWFXbAj-YT/s1600/71_Suzhouclimatic-706241.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe_zzSxN9CmTM64brGdvsjZHVuaw3-PNSUwEpCVe9Jf3gByVjR7YbWmcQrtV8Hh4h6OM7PahG3VxSp6K3smk4YhfIqC9saQwa12gOU6Fbys_Rvks8FVA1C90_izIrhhCSUxYtWFXbAj-YT/s320/71_Suzhouclimatic-706241.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524103640442632114" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-iUprb5AxcTE6GTveLs9hsBGNN4FzIWwOCeYHzXLNOnFKMpLQA_bEkTLhDeEeoI4jqWGJJ4aJZi_uhPya_xnETGbsFfgjQRi6agDQZCCyO4IkeoRRwudE1OY_VJmImQOT7cj_s00rLHKu/s1600/72_suzhoublkbr-706787.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-iUprb5AxcTE6GTveLs9hsBGNN4FzIWwOCeYHzXLNOnFKMpLQA_bEkTLhDeEeoI4jqWGJJ4aJZi_uhPya_xnETGbsFfgjQRi6agDQZCCyO4IkeoRRwudE1OY_VJmImQOT7cj_s00rLHKu/s320/72_suzhoublkbr-706787.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524103640997131778" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjODla1YfDUTwrFKuc7lKaYj4DLHw0h-sfljLPacT9xQBbwnc49ZZN42Ks6J9-F88apRCLEGddlTmgmySW5BDpiUIr6ovuYMU_3a2yiKW4bbKRRTGmgpueIhNeqIQdLSwUoMJY0qGDaZZ1V/s1600/73_suzhoubread-708309.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjODla1YfDUTwrFKuc7lKaYj4DLHw0h-sfljLPacT9xQBbwnc49ZZN42Ks6J9-F88apRCLEGddlTmgmySW5BDpiUIr6ovuYMU_3a2yiKW4bbKRRTGmgpueIhNeqIQdLSwUoMJY0qGDaZZ1V/s320/73_suzhoubread-708309.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524103650117394994" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWh-EwiecLYJnwUU2V2CY3o-nTX_n5KKrASYUnzq0672K39xTTtWpO2joxIs1vedh60DZ8crB74B8bHP5hS9JCvIdNr_avFAIMkl204UhC4A9_UtfKO4bLwBVpt3m82V_stUnCqT9JSVZU/s1600/74_suzhouvan-708862.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWh-EwiecLYJnwUU2V2CY3o-nTX_n5KKrASYUnzq0672K39xTTtWpO2joxIs1vedh60DZ8crB74B8bHP5hS9JCvIdNr_avFAIMkl204UhC4A9_UtfKO4bLwBVpt3m82V_stUnCqT9JSVZU/s320/74_suzhouvan-708862.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524103651515319938" /></a></p>Mike and I went to Suzhou last week. It is a smaller city (than<br>Shanghai, still larger then Seattle) famous for its gardens. I was<br>excited the night that we arrive to find a Uyghur restaurant because<br>they have great food. Especially delicious kebabs. Since that is my<br>current China favorite, Mike was immediately dragged in for dinner.<p>Okay, so that menu might look a bit less appealing, but it was<br>actually quite delicious. I was thrilled when I accidentally ordered<br>my favorite bread and lamb dish. It is strongly seasoned and served<br>with fresh cilantro on top. One of my personal favorites. Besides,<br>what is not to like about a place that actually serves a darker beer<br>with (slightly) more favor?<p>The other two pictures are ones that I took from the window of the<br>restaurant. Suzhou has lots of Van-trucks. They are everywhere and<br>despite being labeled "van" decidedly a truck. The third picture is<br>the view across the street from the restaurant. I think this is<br>another place to eat, but a bit confused by the title.<p>Anyway, more Suzhou posts to follow! This time with actual gardens.<p>AnnAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-61590920624672895442010-10-03T20:01:00.001-07:002010-10-03T20:01:48.807-07:00The Search for Hai Bao<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoLRY2-OiQAj5rB3EN_d2R3QHFkJNZqWqMDSkK_TFLzH28gtRrmKbnhdYV3-2A-9vXlojvmzILfNAnr_lm9iNjJl5gVj2tMrXH4ZEf2PKKmcbiZAG28P42o4oosr3qqbQbwVxHTnfdi-0l/s1600/11_ann_and_haibao-708808.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoLRY2-OiQAj5rB3EN_d2R3QHFkJNZqWqMDSkK_TFLzH28gtRrmKbnhdYV3-2A-9vXlojvmzILfNAnr_lm9iNjJl5gVj2tMrXH4ZEf2PKKmcbiZAG28P42o4oosr3qqbQbwVxHTnfdi-0l/s320/11_ann_and_haibao-708808.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524020760865963042" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjOjhV2aacUtUPWalvpXViXJXlNeb2z4GMY9AWoXRTOI2QnbFuL5_YgI7lVagxFnqbkzaE_2Me-GUku3FDc7ld49DVyySVoPmLIiiHPMe9lmKvLziX7qIq_bp6Olj_ZR8Fenv9e0xtQ8Ob/s1600/64_haibao-710000.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjOjhV2aacUtUPWalvpXViXJXlNeb2z4GMY9AWoXRTOI2QnbFuL5_YgI7lVagxFnqbkzaE_2Me-GUku3FDc7ld49DVyySVoPmLIiiHPMe9lmKvLziX7qIq_bp6Olj_ZR8Fenv9e0xtQ8Ob/s320/64_haibao-710000.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524020765436775154" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCmGhViUYCVxZg-7nyhLZ6M0Cc9-55HTN4b8JUZ94fiXHGtBO40ooGBTSFz839_U7v18QcfOIxAHKjme0oChOA3Ewc7xLpf_IUjaAz_TRb3duOg-hR5Uzy21HMU_Pmwa_-CVm8G9vtXva6/s1600/66_haibao-710846.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCmGhViUYCVxZg-7nyhLZ6M0Cc9-55HTN4b8JUZ94fiXHGtBO40ooGBTSFz839_U7v18QcfOIxAHKjme0oChOA3Ewc7xLpf_IUjaAz_TRb3duOg-hR5Uzy21HMU_Pmwa_-CVm8G9vtXva6/s320/66_haibao-710846.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524020772285986578" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK47o1nfUGXObfHpKFHUz6tgOf2BHjkcyabkrrEhRjSRH9nFi8_33IE7UxsWNxlkLmdQ4uGVk0aqHWyzq665lQjdJuVGiIXIQ-gPSANc3CZpgv5jB0v26RbqBmd8tku7pTirkadm6iTTki/s1600/67_haibao-711930.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK47o1nfUGXObfHpKFHUz6tgOf2BHjkcyabkrrEhRjSRH9nFi8_33IE7UxsWNxlkLmdQ4uGVk0aqHWyzq665lQjdJuVGiIXIQ-gPSANc3CZpgv5jB0v26RbqBmd8tku7pTirkadm6iTTki/s320/67_haibao-711930.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524020775345037362" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lgCTlChLnRYSV4u4DPQbmCzC2qwvfaWl3YhmOAgHcdKpCpHjr3EmHOWsV5st8peAYSLv83qpMeQJU0Fa0FnHm0SWToV60gFyKgX-YEPElQ0GKEmvHELeSUsFP-CQ-6pt9K6MYKlGD5b-/s1600/68_haibao-713240.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lgCTlChLnRYSV4u4DPQbmCzC2qwvfaWl3YhmOAgHcdKpCpHjr3EmHOWsV5st8peAYSLv83qpMeQJU0Fa0FnHm0SWToV60gFyKgX-YEPElQ0GKEmvHELeSUsFP-CQ-6pt9K6MYKlGD5b-/s320/68_haibao-713240.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524020777766600338" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAOSqveN_lR6HnXdV6nvhYLbfDNKctGlkOahy5AC6ETR013_P1WVIWtiVj6yDCxnQRXBibF7_0FGe3W16itOEV-a41XhSoC5QYl_RF1Df_2UZi1lckuvJRw7VPMSmNqYFCggWnd3SleCRX/s1600/69_haibao-714781.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAOSqveN_lR6HnXdV6nvhYLbfDNKctGlkOahy5AC6ETR013_P1WVIWtiVj6yDCxnQRXBibF7_0FGe3W16itOEV-a41XhSoC5QYl_RF1Df_2UZi1lckuvJRw7VPMSmNqYFCggWnd3SleCRX/s320/69_haibao-714781.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524020781566417906" /></a></p>Mike and I spent many of our early Shanghai days trying to hide from<br>Hai Bao. However, he really is everywhere and after awhile we gave in<br>to the power of the Hai Bao. We too were seduced by his charms. We<br>learned his simple ways and language. Our relationship with Hai Bao<br>was short lived. We left his city with mixed emotions forced to<br>wonder what will happen to the million Hai Baos after Expo is over?<br>Will they form their own blue city? Will they mingle among us as<br>bright beacons of hope? We can only imagine...Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-9024095966856256522010-09-30T01:32:00.001-07:002010-09-30T01:32:54.598-07:00Expo (The Final Installment)<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_U15KDR2Op_Bgxru-qgekt4rCIspF2HiL5SnXprdJCALEPQbovGKnxHhFJT52uMkYkEs8DxugUINdE8usTLJg8Xr0kDPWFVVWvjjbLnA7m_VomkX1TTvpHauHOPRpPTZjjCkGCUEiXjWs/s1600/57_expochina-774599.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_U15KDR2Op_Bgxru-qgekt4rCIspF2HiL5SnXprdJCALEPQbovGKnxHhFJT52uMkYkEs8DxugUINdE8usTLJg8Xr0kDPWFVVWvjjbLnA7m_VomkX1TTvpHauHOPRpPTZjjCkGCUEiXjWs/s320/57_expochina-774599.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522621744824569378" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMAAcL6QBEogRzNL7z31acIDMT99Ga-8L7Ndv-ihbIz3h8LqWrcidrWs-79lBStLkbXM14QpXj-HyIPPJOTNJj-q-1q0kLGAyRV6onVzujTlUUbWelWvvdkuFrSaVSZhNd6tWfdkgGpfo6/s1600/58_expoMchina-775814.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMAAcL6QBEogRzNL7z31acIDMT99Ga-8L7Ndv-ihbIz3h8LqWrcidrWs-79lBStLkbXM14QpXj-HyIPPJOTNJj-q-1q0kLGAyRV6onVzujTlUUbWelWvvdkuFrSaVSZhNd6tWfdkgGpfo6/s320/58_expoMchina-775814.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522621747848567266" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO91VZtLOHyxzd38UOBn5R3B73QPeML2jajZal43Ivo5YOpkMlksWbs7RhuB9ioySkqkhS_GZk8ceVRCZpoO7LbATE4U-hNLckUWf1JDLB7R16O3MqLWwjG_DxmI38_T6y8UP2uQD5-dKR/s1600/59_expopanda-777725.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO91VZtLOHyxzd38UOBn5R3B73QPeML2jajZal43Ivo5YOpkMlksWbs7RhuB9ioySkqkhS_GZk8ceVRCZpoO7LbATE4U-hNLckUWf1JDLB7R16O3MqLWwjG_DxmI38_T6y8UP2uQD5-dKR/s320/59_expopanda-777725.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522621755895201522" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMHqFBPeY-Pm9vPgOY1WhUtvZVc3oyH6fdnHMJJjokZCP5l4BKBKoA1K3r6tnz-hLeSIlN_s_-Qy9mP69HskJgezBzQoInQnK-THW8mxQ5K573EofLsjQI_0U5z2kvkiTyRUqRpOxDY4Uu/s1600/62_expoApanda-779091.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMHqFBPeY-Pm9vPgOY1WhUtvZVc3oyH6fdnHMJJjokZCP5l4BKBKoA1K3r6tnz-hLeSIlN_s_-Qy9mP69HskJgezBzQoInQnK-THW8mxQ5K573EofLsjQI_0U5z2kvkiTyRUqRpOxDY4Uu/s320/62_expoApanda-779091.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522621762367037570" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAJxQhDVaF3waHspd3rGycmKOnGJwp-UPJ4ekOOHSIABqkS0hAW_ovQjWm6FBsUhiSqvb1SEYQwlzLp1HqmFUmObR_2feBW_yVTtUZT1avt1kmotemA-EAk7NDscKR89z9hQ1n-DR4GsSE/s1600/60_expoAchina-779928.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAJxQhDVaF3waHspd3rGycmKOnGJwp-UPJ4ekOOHSIABqkS0hAW_ovQjWm6FBsUhiSqvb1SEYQwlzLp1HqmFUmObR_2feBW_yVTtUZT1avt1kmotemA-EAk7NDscKR89z9hQ1n-DR4GsSE/s320/60_expoAchina-779928.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522621767528434050" /></a></p>After tromping past Scandinavia, Mike and I wound our way to the China<br>Pavilion. The China Pavilion is enormous, but we were still amazed<br>when we got to the entrance and there wasn't a line. Incredible. We<br>ran in quickly, feeling like we were getting away with something.<br>Inside were smaller pavilions for each of China's provinces (including<br>the province of Tibet). Sichuan, our favorite of course, had<br>everything: pandas, strange dog/dragon things. MIke and I were both<br>fascinated with the panda. Okay, I was fascinated with the panda, and<br>I have extensive panda-sanctuary plans for when we get to Sichuan. At<br>any rate, we both made imitation panda-gesture poses. And the wild<br>dragon dog things - I began to pose next to one when he blinked,<br>starling me! Ahh!<p>China Pavilion was pretty great, but we were both exhausted and soon<br>after decided to head home. There was a brief panic when we couldn't<br>find the exit. We tried asking some of the staff who seemed to speak<br>good English, but couldn't understand what we wanted (exit? way out?<br>I want to leave?). After making no progress we desperately hurried<br>through the pavilion. Luckily we found some exit arrows on the floor,<br>but we still reached several dead ends before finding the real exit<br>(inexplicably, all the other exits were shut and locked). Once we<br>were outside we started to worry that we had somehow missed the<br>up-in-the-air part of the China pavilion, but were too tired to<br>contemplate going back. Ever.<p>Probably.<p>Ann and MikeAnnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-26385755785721740272010-09-29T21:22:00.001-07:002010-09-29T21:22:38.752-07:00Expo (Part 2)<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcbsPBJL-yVQp8CqHJJYe-I8szOTzw_nNh24Prf5XlcPZcr-8N4kq9fiKb5piC1HAdcsTVB5tGo8dT1Vc4R8l8bZGyBeztsJCnELC23Sr1VREoGLtFBDk_W5zm0KKkD-NgU-SrdQuVjJsf/s1600/46_expomem-758753.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcbsPBJL-yVQp8CqHJJYe-I8szOTzw_nNh24Prf5XlcPZcr-8N4kq9fiKb5piC1HAdcsTVB5tGo8dT1Vc4R8l8bZGyBeztsJCnELC23Sr1VREoGLtFBDk_W5zm0KKkD-NgU-SrdQuVjJsf/s320/46_expomem-758753.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522557250025105202" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWSAEKtQe-g8UedUt_v63eg3wMYxR2E6kyZylwGFPgDyew1RFrrF_hVMTRfyo5DQ8FYekK3b-noObV1hOZ7K8Y9F5Mnp2UFc1bZNA2KWT5r1H1M7_kCmq_SzxXnqjcMl05pa45RVi1tCSB/s1600/47_expoyes-759707.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWSAEKtQe-g8UedUt_v63eg3wMYxR2E6kyZylwGFPgDyew1RFrrF_hVMTRfyo5DQ8FYekK3b-noObV1hOZ7K8Y9F5Mnp2UFc1bZNA2KWT5r1H1M7_kCmq_SzxXnqjcMl05pa45RVi1tCSB/s320/47_expoyes-759707.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522557251335170418" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrwZbZVwE-tFD_i16Mdo6xXg1D9dIVTgmDaG-LVIqTAzw_fPezfHz3vX-IY8R2l4_6ZGGvHjI1gta0VGH4sGF3zNGv0lTQ8v3bd4VpIvjv32Wyp87oU7M-WqZjBfpKDn8eC6KPCtHyCwN_/s1600/54_expohorse-760616.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrwZbZVwE-tFD_i16Mdo6xXg1D9dIVTgmDaG-LVIqTAzw_fPezfHz3vX-IY8R2l4_6ZGGvHjI1gta0VGH4sGF3zNGv0lTQ8v3bd4VpIvjv32Wyp87oU7M-WqZjBfpKDn8eC6KPCtHyCwN_/s320/54_expohorse-760616.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522557254747656018" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1KQ_9aNry0r0zSazqozhMkHz_IX_Dno6futr3YV2yrF6W5AIMcKjVGTmHqY3W7tuR4EnVN4gswf8jwCOhq1A9QMGHmamagM9BYNbS-gsX2LRHCJICxIooYS9Tkxv8AmIc8SCm2kCbBE2S/s1600/53_expoAlookingS-761545.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1KQ_9aNry0r0zSazqozhMkHz_IX_Dno6futr3YV2yrF6W5AIMcKjVGTmHqY3W7tuR4EnVN4gswf8jwCOhq1A9QMGHmamagM9BYNbS-gsX2LRHCJICxIooYS9Tkxv8AmIc8SCm2kCbBE2S/s320/53_expoAlookingS-761545.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522557259567491154" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXMTuGFVzbysAVjR0uoDzSiFH-PDcgDxcdQQqCdKua9oao8AKJYaD78mVcVRUshM4MjmeKrizwbI301Sh3JLp2byv68pRpD5q3m_Hs7kTq3pDhyphenhyphenXsGuYD-eo0ezoiSo7FrPobjBovtr6-g/s1600/55_expomisc-762300.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXMTuGFVzbysAVjR0uoDzSiFH-PDcgDxcdQQqCdKua9oao8AKJYaD78mVcVRUshM4MjmeKrizwbI301Sh3JLp2byv68pRpD5q3m_Hs7kTq3pDhyphenhyphenXsGuYD-eo0ezoiSo7FrPobjBovtr6-g/s320/55_expomisc-762300.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522557263341742530" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUWLdNWr4sBoEqUrrGETMFxy3vc8dwm5nMTmSrAaEI9GO2hqRfEkq8CSAPt2bmUU3CMWVzzvUHhX7NVi_XqFFNwf61lsa7R7V3dtK0BLaqk8A2xBwDW-20Qiumc86Omxb-0Z3G88b3HhNT/s1600/56_exporamps-763517.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUWLdNWr4sBoEqUrrGETMFxy3vc8dwm5nMTmSrAaEI9GO2hqRfEkq8CSAPt2bmUU3CMWVzzvUHhX7NVi_XqFFNwf61lsa7R7V3dtK0BLaqk8A2xBwDW-20Qiumc86Omxb-0Z3G88b3HhNT/s320/56_exporamps-763517.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522557269895348498" /></a></p>Or What Happens When You are Waylaid in Scandinavia Before You Make it to the China Pavilion.<br><br>After the food debacle, we found ourselves in the Expo gift store looking for postcards. Or, Ann found herself in the Expo gift store looking for postcards. Mike found himself sitting on a bench outside, drinking the remainder of the water rations, wondering which pavilion to visit next, before following Ann into the Hai Bao purchasing fray. The gift store (Shanghai is filled with Expo-licensed gift shops selling authentic Expo souvenirs, and the Expo itself is no exception to this rule) had some pretty interesting things. For one, we discovered that Hai Bao is not just limited to posters and plush toys. You can also find him on useful, everyday items. I must say that I (Ann!) was sorely tempted, but Mike managed to pull me away before I gave in and purchased some great nail clippers. So many choices! <br> <br>Thinking more clearly, we headed towards the China Pavilion. We took the elevated walkway (So much dedicated Expo construction: it's a mile of cement walkway, thirty feet wide and forty feet off the ground!) and managed to simultaneously avoid a lot of other foot traffic, and see the view from above. It was great! The walk was long, with plenty of distraction along the way. Predictably, we were completely waylaid by the Scandinavian Pavilions. Sweden had some great horses that became the inspiration for Ann's Swedish Pose. Denmark had a series of ramps that we saw people riding bicycles down. Norway (or Finland, there is some debate) was large, white and egg shaped, surrounded by a broad, shallow moat. It was also strangely mesmerizing and we took lots of pictures in front of it (few of which turned out).<br> <br>After Scandinavia, we continued our journey towards the China Pavilion hoping to at least catch a glimpse and maybe get inside. The crowd strangely sparse - we'd heard stories comparing the expo with that traffic jam outside of Beijing that took 9 days to clear - so we had hopes that we could accomplish the impossible.<br> Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-62680114764264562902010-09-29T07:39:00.001-07:002010-09-29T07:39:59.715-07:00Expo, Expo, Expo! (Part 1)<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHaIryMK4CEZLttoueVpopbEXLcL5VT3DGKozLut0W5e3PpCdZrKaaecaklmr6TFxf-BgU4sv-iMGQuOIBzkaYRfwGIkclL8aUXD5qMdKoTvqcpWisukR1lcpnod1AajwJVa1d9EnpXULo/s1600/42_expoireland-799716.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHaIryMK4CEZLttoueVpopbEXLcL5VT3DGKozLut0W5e3PpCdZrKaaecaklmr6TFxf-BgU4sv-iMGQuOIBzkaYRfwGIkclL8aUXD5qMdKoTvqcpWisukR1lcpnod1AajwJVa1d9EnpXULo/s320/42_expoireland-799716.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522345255163218450" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIrNIDottjO-d6HhXZI3H-39W2l3ZQEJlqV-q-5_mw2cbrCrQkSapxbQ_D1VijH7yOzw5MMR5Pu6B_LbWiArnSv06R2zb8BCQB85UrtoQQn1UoYkDO2YVghTHWI1hs-lMoQydWQDBgtnnU/s1600/48_expocanada-701522.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIrNIDottjO-d6HhXZI3H-39W2l3ZQEJlqV-q-5_mw2cbrCrQkSapxbQ_D1VijH7yOzw5MMR5Pu6B_LbWiArnSv06R2zb8BCQB85UrtoQQn1UoYkDO2YVghTHWI1hs-lMoQydWQDBgtnnU/s320/48_expocanada-701522.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522345259531009378" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOLOjMjlJsCz9UvdLBJgACy7CTiEd7Bre8c38k-T5GImGVqDDbl3x-jVEqR6VZKbF8N7_6jpf-BHgWWm9I4w6suanl5Qng73W0LZL_1ShzKsA54o6nFpETE4hoJyrcTdd4VMBa5wLYGF9b/s1600/49_expoMincanada-702511.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOLOjMjlJsCz9UvdLBJgACy7CTiEd7Bre8c38k-T5GImGVqDDbl3x-jVEqR6VZKbF8N7_6jpf-BHgWWm9I4w6suanl5Qng73W0LZL_1ShzKsA54o6nFpETE4hoJyrcTdd4VMBa5wLYGF9b/s320/49_expoMincanada-702511.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522345264106793138" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRMH_DhPs5mt7JaMpeImEXCVH6aoq_1Cme6C7U3xBYf0stWppWdDf4EV_tFmFwwzFhNOHZ9RRjJgNQHCsRsMVw7qRntSNmj-BDJ9V1HLqRJOtRE2aW1qrvBcl_d3eV1ZelpWfpvShCQyJO/s1600/50_expoAincanada-703482.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRMH_DhPs5mt7JaMpeImEXCVH6aoq_1Cme6C7U3xBYf0stWppWdDf4EV_tFmFwwzFhNOHZ9RRjJgNQHCsRsMVw7qRntSNmj-BDJ9V1HLqRJOtRE2aW1qrvBcl_d3eV1ZelpWfpvShCQyJO/s320/50_expoAincanada-703482.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522345267510225602" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLy1kUzmNjArmoqMvze4oPG8otEv9VqRD7twjMgzmf-BBtF9yBYO71SFUFGOU8l5hIQaXm_lP5XXUkCi-c1JUtdBt_wEMeADEftOg7-MJb8Q1EZDlH8wsOdIU7avuJBA9B79UBMy11zrgQ/s1600/44_exporussia-704498.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLy1kUzmNjArmoqMvze4oPG8otEv9VqRD7twjMgzmf-BBtF9yBYO71SFUFGOU8l5hIQaXm_lP5XXUkCi-c1JUtdBt_wEMeADEftOg7-MJb8Q1EZDlH8wsOdIU7avuJBA9B79UBMy11zrgQ/s320/44_exporussia-704498.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522345273390284850" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuRJPBLj2Sycn1PoAlgEbgV_C1wo9GntJ-5td_dr-OhMAYFTGlnd5dkRQuJlesmFGB8rhNS__r4WCH9kXovo9xSoOM2rSuiidQDQIln6spuKhoqVR0FqxdGr8r9fm-Zl8QH3k6ZqACarak/s1600/52_expousa-705933.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuRJPBLj2Sycn1PoAlgEbgV_C1wo9GntJ-5td_dr-OhMAYFTGlnd5dkRQuJlesmFGB8rhNS__r4WCH9kXovo9xSoOM2rSuiidQDQIln6spuKhoqVR0FqxdGr8r9fm-Zl8QH3k6ZqACarak/s320/52_expousa-705933.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522345282646521330" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdtpgFyXTa7r9PRzhCmmdji98mr3HqQTNAOiLAOm6EgktkyJ4ew-Sh1h2go2d0YH8__U8kFMAzRJ2f_YZk2FOBZ2aL3B7_O6HoyBLKxo0Li3wtQrL2K3dNmDAFRtM4UwVFvtkNm5cx6NG3/s1600/45_expofood-707712.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdtpgFyXTa7r9PRzhCmmdji98mr3HqQTNAOiLAOm6EgktkyJ4ew-Sh1h2go2d0YH8__U8kFMAzRJ2f_YZk2FOBZ2aL3B7_O6HoyBLKxo0Li3wtQrL2K3dNmDAFRtM4UwVFvtkNm5cx6NG3/s320/45_expofood-707712.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522345284590879298" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LHLJ_5fzEvsCEWyONLizV5wTV2qCVgx2iHTN8CD-BUHn_oghZzeIYLiy_xEqO13HIh-2ucMWzxCtj7y3S2-l_qdvGdZxICH3O2CzdKkLqzqqw4yh4ZhPu9_htOvPcbZ8qVGfp7VzqrIK/s1600/61_expohaibao-708649.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LHLJ_5fzEvsCEWyONLizV5wTV2qCVgx2iHTN8CD-BUHn_oghZzeIYLiy_xEqO13HIh-2ucMWzxCtj7y3S2-l_qdvGdZxICH3O2CzdKkLqzqqw4yh4ZhPu9_htOvPcbZ8qVGfp7VzqrIK/s320/61_expohaibao-708649.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522345291781933954" /></a></p><br>Mike and Ann (We're both contributing to this blog entry) made the pilgrimage to Shanghai Expo 2010 last Friday. For those of you blissfully unaware (what is Expo?), Expo is a modern World's Fair hosted by Shanghai in China. As far as purpose...well...in Seattle we have the Space Needle to thank the World's Fair for. China will have the red inverted pyramid of their China Pavilion and a graveyard full of Hai Baos. Hai Bao is everywhere in Shanghai. Everywhere. Every single park, mall and most hotel lobbies. Posters, billboards, television ads. Plush dolls carried along subway rides. It is pretty remarkable. Ubiquitous smiling blue Gumby.<br> <br>And it's not just outlandish Hai Bao purchases - Shanghai has gone all-out for the Expo! We rode a subway to get to the Expo, of course - everyone in Shanghai rides the subway everywhere - and we had picked this Expo entrance (I think there are 15 entrances in total, not all on-site, in what must be an effort to distribute the pretty serious pedestrian all-hours Expo traffic) because we had heard that the wait was short (so short! mercifully short!). We wended through the interminable metal railings (fairly empty of people!), slalomed our way from the ticket selling booths to Airport-level security at the entrance (they wanded me down, made me take the pen out of my pocket), and then once through descended to another subway stop. The Expo has its own subway line, three stops just like any stops throughout the rest of the city: two in the Expo grounds and one a ways off at the Expo entrance we had chosen. The Expo, in a similar vein, has commandeered the ferry system: there are four "Expo Water Gates".<br> <br>Thus we arrived at the expo. Awed, of course, but equally dazed. Evidence of this is supported by our quick entrance into the Ireland Pavilion. We walked up a quiet walkway and into some strange Dublin meets Shanghai art exhibit. It was very odd. From there we quickly backtracked to the main Pavilion only to find ourselves walking uphill and against the flow of traffic. We quickly figured out that we had stumbled in the exit. Undeterred, we continued through the pavilion to the entrance and then headed for the exit again. Unknowingly we had begun by bypassing one of the expo's many lines.<br> <br>From here we wandered. The line to Canada was moving quickly (some people were running, actually, hurrying to get into an easy Pavilion) so we gave it a shot. It was a fun, red (as you can see from the pictures), very Canadian experience. We were greeted by a white guy on a television screen (the Expo has so many screens!) speaking Chinese. Inside was at first sort of like a dance hall, but with more picture taking - then a room of images of Canada - then a fairly quiet room with slow wide-angle photographs fading one to the next, of a truck driver and a Quebecois vegetable warehouse (we didn't linger long enough to see whatever larger arc the room's exhibit may have had in store) - before finally leaving through a space in the wildly shaped thin-slatted exterior.<br> <br>Russia and USA were nearby, so we moseyed over for a look. The lines to both were long, the USA in particular, so we were forced to extrapolate from the buildings' exteriors what might be contained inside. Russia was magnificent. The USA, well, less so. It was a terrible, car-dealership-like building. It left both of us depressed and disoriented.<br> <br>And hungry, it turned out. From there we floundered into a food area fully living up to every Westerner's secret China eating nightmare. Large signs, ambiguous prices, no sign of eating utensils, plates of food sitting out waiting to be grabbed by a member of the dense, pushing crowd. The wooden chopsticks we finally found kept in a warm, moist drawer. We opted for a quick rinse of Purell and eating with our hands fried baozi that we typically bought on the street for half what we thought we were paying, which turned out to be half again what we were actually charged when we got to the front. After barely escaping alive with the questionable soup filled baozi safely in our stomachs we made a quick exit from the region. We used our new found strength to strike out towards the China pavilion.<br> <br>(Mike and Ann)<br> Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-84606500196643469412010-09-27T18:15:00.001-07:002010-09-27T18:15:46.769-07:00The Durian Incident / Mochi, how could you?<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Hpe6ffNmgcTh8w-RfrMbJZb0-4xwKvAnspK_bqyxNfNHSye8H8gWKMMVXLmORWdJFoLroERFT_6trGrPyK-uUxItIb88DOAhX_pLoEw1jz8NdUo8xROFktb5FjogmXfOe-Nyc1LiAXDY/s1600/37_durian-746770.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Hpe6ffNmgcTh8w-RfrMbJZb0-4xwKvAnspK_bqyxNfNHSye8H8gWKMMVXLmORWdJFoLroERFT_6trGrPyK-uUxItIb88DOAhX_pLoEw1jz8NdUo8xROFktb5FjogmXfOe-Nyc1LiAXDY/s320/37_durian-746770.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5521766920201648738" /></a></p>I had to wait an hour for dinner tonight, hungry, desperate, faint, while Mike led me from restaurant to expensive restaurant looking for somewhere able to satisfy his exacting standards at wholesale price. The Princess and the Pea Vine. We had taken the subway from Pete's place in Pudong, where we're now staying, over to ritzy Lujiazui - the financial center of the universe, and home to massively tall buildings and some dubious architectural decisions - and ended up prowling around The Super Brand Name Mall (that's its name!) for dinner. Pete and Elyn had taken us there for dinner the other day, but Mike balked at the (admittedly rather expensive) Xiao Long Bao at the restaurant that had been our first choice plan. We ended up at a Taiwanese place for dinner, not too expensive, not too bad. Nothing special. But somewhere during that long hour prior to dinner we had passed a dessert restaurant with pictures of mochi in the window. I never leave a restaurant and immediately want dessert, but here I was pulling mike over to the mochi place. Little did we know it wasn't a mochi place so much as a durian dessert place, but they did orders to-go, which was what we wanted. I settled on the 5-mochi sampler and Mike got something strange that could have been custard, or could have been milk (it was milk) with two scoops in it: one of thai black rice and one of durian. The first bite of the mochi sampler was foreboding. Or downright bad, really. Kind of rotten, even. Durian.<br> <br>Anything that requires both pickles and a cup of Earl Grey Tea to wash the taste away is no good.<br><br>Mike and Ann<br><br>Ann and I started our day with extensive plans: fabric market, tea and grabbing food along the way. Unfortunately, we didn't made it out of the house until 7 at night, after Ann got in a 3 hour nap (so tired!). Thus our search for a good dinner place was under strain before it ever even began. We arrived in Lujiazui and went to the only place that looked remotely promising, the Super Brand Name Mall (it doesn't sound remotely promising, does it). There I searched and searched for a place to eat, becoming more worried as stipulations were passed on by Ann. "No noodles. No soup. No Korean. No sea food."...I took up the challenge. We walked around the mall for almost an hour and after only 45 minutes I could tell that I was losing Ann. It started with lagging as we were getting off the escalator. She wasn't dodging other couples the way she normally can. A glazed look had come into her eyes. I made an almost fatal error by settling too soon, steering us towards a place that looked good and then aborting after we were seated. Ann's eyes flashed with anger. I fended her off with sweet words and managed to find a good Taiwanese place in the end. Unfortunately, the Mochi place had already been spotted. Our fate was sealed.<br> <br>Durian burps for the rest of the night. Worst fate in the world.<br><br>Ann and Mike<br> Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-44549276123391394632010-09-23T23:34:00.001-07:002010-09-23T23:34:16.182-07:00Dispensary<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5z3ImIF4BOX_rmRg7lygpJElIktU-F8I2gc3EL8jgPTpxr11LpGJtI1_1R3upRBJL6XEG-aqrlA3Kohy63sJVzgHn4Q5ZDo0gvdU3aIvNBVsLc2uJdmzM66SABq-40nGI6P4gWG8LinNK/s1600/22_herbdispensary-756183.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5z3ImIF4BOX_rmRg7lygpJElIktU-F8I2gc3EL8jgPTpxr11LpGJtI1_1R3upRBJL6XEG-aqrlA3Kohy63sJVzgHn4Q5ZDo0gvdU3aIvNBVsLc2uJdmzM66SABq-40nGI6P4gWG8LinNK/s320/22_herbdispensary-756183.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520364659835366482" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvDAwGWp_ETirq5ppiKY4aKdC69Gxs0H4vI9nwvG1neU_SA3vUPEZrQaKjh0D0o77HKOseVzH6BxLbkH1RY0rfqBrqLxmOaFlGQKYPgxMlju4F4dhBB1Tjwf4cJFZJXA9ip2QvqPzsge_s/s1600/35_herbdispensary-757126.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvDAwGWp_ETirq5ppiKY4aKdC69Gxs0H4vI9nwvG1neU_SA3vUPEZrQaKjh0D0o77HKOseVzH6BxLbkH1RY0rfqBrqLxmOaFlGQKYPgxMlju4F4dhBB1Tjwf4cJFZJXA9ip2QvqPzsge_s/s320/35_herbdispensary-757126.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520364661578544498" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcrxYgak74pH9-cSl601HiNxee8FYW5N70IErubIGY0G1r72H-Pfp1xsGwbYMEhYoRh2jAdvg4OIGdMcRUOhO1dH-EW9m7qrwWLM_j8jhLslkpz0J9OStL_z84oCLTzYhLwJVz76tMc5bA/s1600/25_herbdispensary-758005.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcrxYgak74pH9-cSl601HiNxee8FYW5N70IErubIGY0G1r72H-Pfp1xsGwbYMEhYoRh2jAdvg4OIGdMcRUOhO1dH-EW9m7qrwWLM_j8jhLslkpz0J9OStL_z84oCLTzYhLwJVz76tMc5bA/s320/25_herbdispensary-758005.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520364667763253730" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirFXHWiEroxPRUrCYeVmKGVN7Iuy6SzlIt1vyUxaQ2QxEpOBh4KBdWHagXx4VBpZhUrctaOFnoDnEBHAjt7fVUCId0Zx7JPjpe1J-O_ImJj-XzS6fnMOVzwHnF5bwjUzSwgE2dV4iiPJCb/s1600/26_DAformula-759677.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirFXHWiEroxPRUrCYeVmKGVN7Iuy6SzlIt1vyUxaQ2QxEpOBh4KBdWHagXx4VBpZhUrctaOFnoDnEBHAjt7fVUCId0Zx7JPjpe1J-O_ImJj-XzS6fnMOVzwHnF5bwjUzSwgE2dV4iiPJCb/s320/26_DAformula-759677.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520364671616280578" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcDz0qpOSEcRGjc-0YJnjViZzQjZa0d_FunPjaQdUZR-w5eB6XhKzXu3Nt7O-PVAwC9-4abn4ZODe_ycKTC5TTugl0M24b8Q2BOzIunx_ZmxhJlqm3BRFufqiHd09Q38ZR4oY71PRUWKtq/s1600/27_DAformula-760451.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcDz0qpOSEcRGjc-0YJnjViZzQjZa0d_FunPjaQdUZR-w5eB6XhKzXu3Nt7O-PVAwC9-4abn4ZODe_ycKTC5TTugl0M24b8Q2BOzIunx_ZmxhJlqm3BRFufqiHd09Q38ZR4oY71PRUWKtq/s320/27_DAformula-760451.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520364674178768178" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS3nc1qzrREojqdrbvNtdCsS4J3tJHo9KSlSDXY0YMUhmj9W1QGuo9LHByHhMe7nYeHewSjYWP_RXTKB1loaAFH06cqAKhVsgOiJwTqAXdHzy1MQEncdmxVeWpXZW8hAhqkkgn7qr_Nv8v/s1600/28_ashley!-761315.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS3nc1qzrREojqdrbvNtdCsS4J3tJHo9KSlSDXY0YMUhmj9W1QGuo9LHByHhMe7nYeHewSjYWP_RXTKB1loaAFH06cqAKhVsgOiJwTqAXdHzy1MQEncdmxVeWpXZW8hAhqkkgn7qr_Nv8v/s320/28_ashley!-761315.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520364680166899650" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP8gXFZCyFTfuChHhDdqDrQmNSjfKJjF_DilYHgUB4FKGSfI85UfpAaEFj8EYE2LkyPnltnElgl2j3wgEh-HKJM2O_SKtAcwrNZyWI_rTcb6dW5Ue5rirDqdZtBj-UqVKgetFVzCs2GWJn/s1600/30_herbdispensary-762044.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP8gXFZCyFTfuChHhDdqDrQmNSjfKJjF_DilYHgUB4FKGSfI85UfpAaEFj8EYE2LkyPnltnElgl2j3wgEh-HKJM2O_SKtAcwrNZyWI_rTcb6dW5Ue5rirDqdZtBj-UqVKgetFVzCs2GWJn/s320/30_herbdispensary-762044.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520364684319006850" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiy2aRN33K2gdSRoHchd9QCkTsMyVBpIMroPsya6fX0brD6WYUmwNFK-M3DpyxaOcA5a2l_2CMcKOY-JmAvOdbag5LcuXkFGGdzqyPTZnUw39PZuPLdzvSGr0J-8eQAAEl8-Vj8ViBwRSp/s1600/31_Allen!!-762966.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiy2aRN33K2gdSRoHchd9QCkTsMyVBpIMroPsya6fX0brD6WYUmwNFK-M3DpyxaOcA5a2l_2CMcKOY-JmAvOdbag5LcuXkFGGdzqyPTZnUw39PZuPLdzvSGr0J-8eQAAEl8-Vj8ViBwRSp/s320/31_Allen!!-762966.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520364687159456866" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA0eKYRYctcxUUnM80o-AYLyN29f3ia-xHBiq72KGPKqctqxZMdyqd5f732x6UKd_JGisNljVSDugB6Lo6a1X_frU-E6OSfkkmdH2LfdWZF1fhmHFoUCqiZDLDnuC-0Z-26TK8QLkwBrGC/s1600/32_zhusha-763920.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA0eKYRYctcxUUnM80o-AYLyN29f3ia-xHBiq72KGPKqctqxZMdyqd5f732x6UKd_JGisNljVSDugB6Lo6a1X_frU-E6OSfkkmdH2LfdWZF1fhmHFoUCqiZDLDnuC-0Z-26TK8QLkwBrGC/s320/32_zhusha-763920.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520364691191665714" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4iTWhD19mpluTNmupEB55iPjIfZD2ZAFvO7RBTNTsULds6da1gK7ev_87-8rx2mPg1RzsgsbEeiD3zH8AzI-fder2FneT-nRDNR1eGjhhcb4wCYxiU3UD32GZFuy0NADy5VsuawScSwLS/s1600/34_herbdispensary-765804.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4iTWhD19mpluTNmupEB55iPjIfZD2ZAFvO7RBTNTsULds6da1gK7ev_87-8rx2mPg1RzsgsbEeiD3zH8AzI-fder2FneT-nRDNR1eGjhhcb4wCYxiU3UD32GZFuy0NADy5VsuawScSwLS/s320/34_herbdispensary-765804.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520364694600806802" /></a></p>We were able to tour a Chinese herbal dispensary at the end of our last day. It was amazing and I think that we could use some of the ideas to improve our own Bastyr Chinese Herbal Dispensary (attention Allen). <br><br>Hopefully this numbering system that I'm using will show up on the blog. If not...I'm sorry. I can only hope that each picture and it's explanation will be decipherable. <br> <br>(Picture 22) Note the nice wooden table and chairs. I think it's time we got rid of that plastic table and moved in one of those! Also, the boring white lab coats could be replaced with those snazzy blue uniforms. Hmm?<br> <br>(Picture 25) Clearly our jar system is not challenging enough. The drawers could effectively remove most visual cues.<br><br>(Pictures 26 and 27) This formula is monumental. Suddenly I am ashamed.<br><br>(Pictures 30 and 31) Okay, so I think this may give us some clues on how to fold up the formulas using the non-paper bag method. But I still have no real idea of how they are able to do this. It is pretty amazing.<br> <br>The dispensary was really incredible thing to get to see. It was beautiful on the inside and amazing to watch how they measured and built all of the formulas. Often they used no scales at all, but would just eyeball how much to put in each formula. Sometimes they would pull out the tiny gold scale and measure the herbs that way. We even got to see some rare herbs like cinnabar. It was great.<br> <br>Ann<br> Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-85643684993782823242010-09-23T23:28:00.001-07:002010-09-23T23:28:39.974-07:00Last day of clinic<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHudNqpmA0cSzb3ceHNV7HSzAdkrQhi9-ezEplIi0mpyKsCguOzDJmdoiyxH9Pw8b25GBZCSN6FFUWNN075L6U_YV4bg0SHwJLsj0X3unTYFCh97r6RpDjLWPZlnnAM_iL4R0T_Dfq2YrS/s1600/17_lastday-719975.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHudNqpmA0cSzb3ceHNV7HSzAdkrQhi9-ezEplIi0mpyKsCguOzDJmdoiyxH9Pw8b25GBZCSN6FFUWNN075L6U_YV4bg0SHwJLsj0X3unTYFCh97r6RpDjLWPZlnnAM_iL4R0T_Dfq2YrS/s320/17_lastday-719975.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520363216588524882" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIL0M8EfsZLly_oNe5LY5T2YaUaCdYA9u1YNNrIOY2z17tOW7eDdkziiPIuPpafaL5Bsse1Keu8qJxT0_WY1DTVgoEejcU0aNAQCT6ZB0qG9Je2LUO60XKS2Jd2gELo_3m3VKucx_STei8/s1600/20_lastday-720858.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIL0M8EfsZLly_oNe5LY5T2YaUaCdYA9u1YNNrIOY2z17tOW7eDdkziiPIuPpafaL5Bsse1Keu8qJxT0_WY1DTVgoEejcU0aNAQCT6ZB0qG9Je2LUO60XKS2Jd2gELo_3m3VKucx_STei8/s320/20_lastday-720858.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520363214743431874" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxulkFWTy1KQcBhYGWSDiM5C6zGQlObfYCJvq_aLJD8SRY42nRbIyEwOel1BkdMg9iXVlvftr-_nDtLoDgEPeiWAQHE4bW2LmPXR8eOeAVjVCqnfazEf2_t_MHfPTsLtlPzsvztrxkfn6p/s1600/21_lastday-721469.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxulkFWTy1KQcBhYGWSDiM5C6zGQlObfYCJvq_aLJD8SRY42nRbIyEwOel1BkdMg9iXVlvftr-_nDtLoDgEPeiWAQHE4bW2LmPXR8eOeAVjVCqnfazEf2_t_MHfPTsLtlPzsvztrxkfn6p/s320/21_lastday-721469.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520363218687387314" /></a></p>Tuesday was the last shift at Shu Guang Hospital. It has been great having shifts there. On our second to last day because of a scheduling mistake (I think) we were all able to observe an acupuncture shift. It was really interesting. First off, the needles that they used were 1.5 cun 36. So thinner then what I thought anyone used in China. All of the doctors were all really good with their freehand insertion. The main doctor in the clinic was a famous acupuncturist and forgive me because I didn't catch his name. Anyway, he needled LI 10 bilaterally and with a simple manipulation was able to make one side feel hot and the other side feel cold. It was pretty incredible. <br> <br>A great shift overall. After observing for a bit, we were invited to cup each other. Paul wanted to be cupped and I missed treating someone, so I volunteered to cup him. They brought a huge tray of large cups. I was suddenly nervous, but I managed to cup Paul's entire back along foot taiyang (both sides of his spine) and one point on each shoulder. I checked the cups to make sure that they were tight since I didn't want to risk on of them falling off. Ahh! That would have been awful! Paul was a great sport having so many tight cups on him and when one of the acupuncture doctors came by he checked the cups and was impressed. However, that was just the start of us showing off our good acupuncture skills because after that we were give our own patient. We came up with a diagnosis and the Paul and Joel were able to treat her. They did great, especially since we don't practice our freehand very frequently and were praised by the famous acupuncture doctor! Good job guys! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that because I left my camera at home. However, I know that Y Lan took some good pictures, so we will just have to wait for those.<br> <br>So far I have had a great time in China. Our new hotel is amazing and beautiful. It has all of the luxuries that I could only dream of back home such as a swimming pool and prepared breakfast. We managed to find a laundromat close by and had nice clean clothes. Thank goodness because I was always managing to spill food on myself. Sue and Andy were great and very helpful. Also, everyone who I went on the trip with have been great. We have all had a great time together and I'm so thankful that I have such a great class to hang out with. I'm sad that the we are all going our separate ways, but I'm excited to see the rest of China. Onward to Chengdu on the 3rd!<br> <br>Hopefully more trips before then!<br><br>Ann<br><br>All of the attached pictures were taken outside of Shu Guang on the last day<br><br> Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-74327900272407780822010-09-23T04:26:00.001-07:002010-09-23T04:26:06.461-07:00Postcards!I want to send some postcards from Shanghai, but I have no addresses. If you want an amazing, lifechanging postcard, send me an email with some mundane (or thrilling) update/story. And your mailing address. I hope to hear from you soon. Ahem. Krista.<br> <br>My new email, for those of you who don't know, is ann dot s dot murphy at gmail. Mike is making me write it out like this because he says I'll get lots of spam if I just put it there like it normally goes.<br> <br>Ann<br> Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-17742008905923367862010-09-23T04:13:00.001-07:002010-09-23T04:13:37.865-07:00Let them eat snake!<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNVwk47206SaVy8Yi8AWdTR6wY3hHTyvt29Q8MB-m8X48T6YzQau805iRCmeua56EJ_PsJJn3pF6J7xx-HSzLBi3COWY20z1AE-a4hyQD1DRGdT2zW4k0CVmQWyhJtqzaMjns69bkTIUXU/s1600/10_fried_baozi-717866.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNVwk47206SaVy8Yi8AWdTR6wY3hHTyvt29Q8MB-m8X48T6YzQau805iRCmeua56EJ_PsJJn3pF6J7xx-HSzLBi3COWY20z1AE-a4hyQD1DRGdT2zW4k0CVmQWyhJtqzaMjns69bkTIUXU/s320/10_fried_baozi-717866.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520065565204676450" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0RAh20srk_KyZJSOoR5K2Ku779h3ROpzV5DmuXTV94GVjONDdyzJzGcijCha-cnniDKF21iMw1pYGySI1eSocersVT0BhKbzvRp4nJ9ZihCFeFB-w9Zc386CGoBYm5-IV8c-TylNTaW6k/s1600/14_twice_cooked_ann-718838.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0RAh20srk_KyZJSOoR5K2Ku779h3ROpzV5DmuXTV94GVjONDdyzJzGcijCha-cnniDKF21iMw1pYGySI1eSocersVT0BhKbzvRp4nJ9ZihCFeFB-w9Zc386CGoBYm5-IV8c-TylNTaW6k/s320/14_twice_cooked_ann-718838.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520065564361393394" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgowdFIGmSW8nNe0uNXQ_wopjWx34T3J5WobsgOFXE1r1JsR-b5yugAlYO6K-3cxHMPPiHPWrG43Ueoz8ynfaI4mkrgiBNUQb4Ie0LdBeD9Fsur0ZjWSVwGRR3RrjxKCeiPw9wIKEQk6Oy1/s1600/09_hunan_guidebook_food-720536.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgowdFIGmSW8nNe0uNXQ_wopjWx34T3J5WobsgOFXE1r1JsR-b5yugAlYO6K-3cxHMPPiHPWrG43Ueoz8ynfaI4mkrgiBNUQb4Ie0LdBeD9Fsur0ZjWSVwGRR3RrjxKCeiPw9wIKEQk6Oy1/s320/09_hunan_guidebook_food-720536.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520065573551711570" /></a></p>Okay, so I've been eating and eating these past few weeks, but not<br>blogging [this is Mike]!  Ann and I are running off to a sort of<br>Shanghai garment district in a few minutes to pick up a strapless<br>dress she's had copied out of a magazine by one of the many, many<br>tailors here willing to do that, but before we leave here's a quick<br>food synopsis with a few pictures to bring you all up to date on what<br>I've been doing.<p>We'll start with a little street food, just as I did.  I landed late<br>in the evening three weeks ago, groggy and jet lagged.  Ann whisked me<br>home in a cab (through the heavy, humid Shanghai air) and I fell<br>asleep almost immediately.  The next morning out we went for baozi<br>breakfast before Ann's class, and they were just what I needed.  Hot,<br>fresh out of giant bamboo baskets gusting with steam, filled with<br>green vegetables and little bits of mushroom.  Or with a chunk of<br>ground pork and a rich brown gravy.  Or a less meat-ball like,<br>smoother mixture of pork and vegetables.  Or, just today I had one<br>with meatball, gravy, and a little bit of vegetable mixed in, kind of<br>a compromise baozi.  They come with all kinds of things in them, but<br>I'm only just starting to have the vocabulary to stray farther down<br>the menu, finally able to ask "what's that soup baozi up there" and<br>have a chance of understanding the reply (soup baozi always seems to<br>refer to gravy).<p>But there are plenty of baozi-like things with actual liquid in them!<br>We've had fried baozi a little smaller than their steamed<br>counterparts, I always call them guotie (pot-stickers) when I order<br>them but they use a thicker yeasted dough, that are bursting with<br>juicy pork broth (they've still got a little meatball in them, too).<br>There's a picture somewhere at the top of this post of a woman cook<br>grabbing a small bag of these for us fresh out of the pan.  Then there<br>are xiao long bao, a Shanghai specialty, thin skinned steamed<br>dumplings with pork and pork broth.  We've tried these at a number of<br>places and they really run the gamut on quality.  They're the riskiest<br>thing we order: sometimes delicious (really only two places seem to<br>make excellent xiao long bao), sometimes inedible, mostly somewhere<br>disappointingly in between.  There are even pot-stickers like we're<br>used to back home, but here on the street they come with that juicy<br>broth.<p>My favorite of the street foods, though, is the green onion pancake<br>(cong you bing).  It's a deep fried disk of dough with green onion and<br>little pork in the center.  Best when I can see them frying it (they<br>often seem to sit out in piles, cooling off and collecting local<br>airborne bacteria - generally getting less and less desirable),<br>they're piping hot and wonderfully crunchy.<p>Another suspect street food is kebab, which we see grilling above<br>ground outside of many of the subway stops.  They're heavily spiced,<br>typically lamb, done in Xinjiang style: West Chinese Muslim food.  So<br>far we've only bought this outside of our favorite Xinjiang<br>restaurant, where we can see that they keep the meat in an ice chest<br>and bring out trays of kebabs to refill it.  At the subways the raw<br>skewers are just stacked up in piles.  Dubiously.  But inside, the<br>sit-down Xinjiang is Ann's favorite spot to eat.  Our first time in we<br>got a lamb dish that came out on a tray with a flame under it,<br>sizzling and cooking as we ate.  Another visit we had a cold spiced<br>meat (like one I've had back in the US), and Da Pan Ji - a chicken<br>stew - at Pete's suggestion.  Peter and Elyn, my aunt and uncle who<br>live here, have taken us out several times and are generally a wealth<br>of information and local contacts.  Xinjiang food is one of Pete's<br>favorites, too.  Da Pan Ji is large and cheap, lots of chicken with<br>plenty of bones still in it, potatoes, and long flat noodles to soak<br>up the broth towards the end when the good bits have all been eaten<br>up.<p>Home style (Jia Chang) Chinese food is my favorite for eating out<br>here.  There's Ma Po Tofu, a spicy tofu with plenty of hot, oily sauce<br>and numbing Sichuan peppercorns, Lazi Ji, which is chicken fried a<br>little crispy with lots of dried hot peppers, Fried String Beans (a<br>little crispy, a lot salty), all sorts of Chinese Greens cooked simply<br>in a light sauce with garlic (favorites this way are pea vines and on<br>choy), Bitter Melon (bitter!), Yu Xiang Eggplant, cooked soft in a<br>sauce with a lot of oil, garlic, ginger, and Twice Cooked Pork<br>(pictured here with Ann and a large bottle of Tsingdao beer).  Also<br>lots of Tsingdao, which is cheap and comes in big 600ml bottles!<p>At one of these restaurants, I guess a little bit on the fancier side<br>- the chopsticks, bowl, cup and plate came wrapped in a sealed<br>plastic.  At this place we got simple Chinese food for dinner, but<br>fancy, unusual drinks to go with it!  Ann got a sprite that came with<br>a salty, preserved lemon in it!  Surprisingly tasty.  And I got hot(!)<br>Coke that had been simmered with ginger and lemon.  Even stranger than<br>the Sprite, but I had been fighting off a cold and the ginger lemon<br>Coke seemed almost medicinal.  It hit the spot.<p>There's a thing that fancy restaurants here do: they've got all this<br>seafood and really exotic stuff on the menu that looks strange and<br>totally unappealing. We tried a Hunan-style restaurant out of Ann's<br>guidebook, and almost didn't know what to order off the menu.  It was<br>during one of Ann's many hurried lunch breaks between clinic and<br>lecture, and I had insisted that we try to find this new place. As<br>the walk got longer and longer Ann got antsy about making it on time<br>to lecture, and we both got hungry and a little grumpy. The menu<br>featured pages of seafood, a few dishes with bullfrog, one of crispy<br>intestines - I panicked, figuring it would be a bust - but we salvaged<br>the whole thing! We picked an eggplant dish that came out in a stone<br>pot, bubbling in its gingery sauce, good old Ku Gua, bitter melon,<br>that turned out to be a pile bigger than we could finish, and garlic<br>shoots and smoky bacon that Ann couldn't get enough of. The third<br>picture above (above? I don't end up getting to see the blog myself -<br>it all looks like an email from this end) is of this small feast. For<br>the curious: she made it to lecture with time to spare. Yay Hunan<br>restaurant!Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-91368582342457437662010-09-18T22:39:00.001-07:002010-09-18T22:39:26.278-07:00Pictures!<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTjd0nU09iJJ2u-8qmrJ2a7IGHYuZ_sIz7tRQf27GOt08zflPB8QvSv0TDlGm-csRpQzmjsmXvWcb35h0gDwWwDFbBzFgqSRNxChnxp2mEKPILPv-nRHduvZTy-vO0Nsn3puwrC666xIDx/s1600/03_airplane-766279.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTjd0nU09iJJ2u-8qmrJ2a7IGHYuZ_sIz7tRQf27GOt08zflPB8QvSv0TDlGm-csRpQzmjsmXvWcb35h0gDwWwDFbBzFgqSRNxChnxp2mEKPILPv-nRHduvZTy-vO0Nsn3puwrC666xIDx/s320/03_airplane-766279.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518495102457601698" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8Z_LINpdDePr3g9c-0fWG0DWJtAnB8jLabBGuN4P7IdfAuLbrnj16xaL-qURevP8JFaiU3gFlNTOo-BOaXVn8umdauVKjNGhkK6WSLA_jay6sHMCf7kdnhPD9VsXLmz7q2pr1-6N1u-gu/s1600/04_airplane-767698.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8Z_LINpdDePr3g9c-0fWG0DWJtAnB8jLabBGuN4P7IdfAuLbrnj16xaL-qURevP8JFaiU3gFlNTOo-BOaXVn8umdauVKjNGhkK6WSLA_jay6sHMCf7kdnhPD9VsXLmz7q2pr1-6N1u-gu/s320/04_airplane-767698.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518495104929020242" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg94Nio4ynnyNZ20y0PaK4_o-0-fcpN4_cHQSWTiZnDMFy21DIN5fixeCwV0IQUatCnsJ_C2NUMNPoJgCeEFyt3JusdLVYUyYLiWzpFJOsnmxiTnqIyf6tNonL66S0ANj-Zj8G-x2K_D4ZV/s1600/05_airplane-768672.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg94Nio4ynnyNZ20y0PaK4_o-0-fcpN4_cHQSWTiZnDMFy21DIN5fixeCwV0IQUatCnsJ_C2NUMNPoJgCeEFyt3JusdLVYUyYLiWzpFJOsnmxiTnqIyf6tNonL66S0ANj-Zj8G-x2K_D4ZV/s320/05_airplane-768672.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518495110233745090" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBVfcseBAyBHj0j9eJ8Nbk-W4XIpQ9e714EJ1_rNMu6gHAnygarCTtqSSk0aoLmXGZkQAvf30croRUDzhSTzpKEqOFWZy5PTMGdwsKOW05QMuedo5zy4URYuGtgzvwgyhcGpfERYZSWvUV/s1600/06_oldhotel-771202.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBVfcseBAyBHj0j9eJ8Nbk-W4XIpQ9e714EJ1_rNMu6gHAnygarCTtqSSk0aoLmXGZkQAvf30croRUDzhSTzpKEqOFWZy5PTMGdwsKOW05QMuedo5zy4URYuGtgzvwgyhcGpfERYZSWvUV/s320/06_oldhotel-771202.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518495123260082674" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyKurgr5dmUGqwJelxMTVFceuwKeE6P0pdgRf4xj66xh5zXidXSUATDTrp1FCakRMhdqU9GqnwIBl0YAsMJKBPO0AxuxW5UVgcWntxIFzbDoT-BZ9_6NP4UtqZkvUZZW5lLxYq4GGC3fVw/s1600/07_reeb-772074.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyKurgr5dmUGqwJelxMTVFceuwKeE6P0pdgRf4xj66xh5zXidXSUATDTrp1FCakRMhdqU9GqnwIBl0YAsMJKBPO0AxuxW5UVgcWntxIFzbDoT-BZ9_6NP4UtqZkvUZZW5lLxYq4GGC3fVw/s320/07_reeb-772074.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518495128060758386" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRp8wCaXKX6vOEwe9-LmLIlvOyj2W0ZqpM2VusDJyeQ82Wi0FllqNRmIZRWfA6mtEa5f-9zY2eMSOiqbpS_QCRQzX0oekNDxAIFSBZ0tjop8zMLTF51NUUzbGFUvucXVJlML_7iaJdngCb/s1600/DSCI0022-773030.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRp8wCaXKX6vOEwe9-LmLIlvOyj2W0ZqpM2VusDJyeQ82Wi0FllqNRmIZRWfA6mtEa5f-9zY2eMSOiqbpS_QCRQzX0oekNDxAIFSBZ0tjop8zMLTF51NUUzbGFUvucXVJlML_7iaJdngCb/s320/DSCI0022-773030.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518495133447984466" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5WHe0h-4O99bb_CzqCJG373lnkZuhDJSBfynJVh4u5bzRfym-WD0XEGJZA_5SdI2HvEqYsTdHWBeh3MJb6pgboS7-p-5OTHuRWIiHt0XHs1QgbU1fE2_9pdNDej93CrOj5_1WH2SM3C3t/s1600/DSCI0033-773983.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5WHe0h-4O99bb_CzqCJG373lnkZuhDJSBfynJVh4u5bzRfym-WD0XEGJZA_5SdI2HvEqYsTdHWBeh3MJb6pgboS7-p-5OTHuRWIiHt0XHs1QgbU1fE2_9pdNDej93CrOj5_1WH2SM3C3t/s320/DSCI0033-773983.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518495135479127586" /></a></p><p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5lcquYkZcFHMLm2l7F1m2Uun9qUkF3pb3Hdw-vGC_pg1Tpvy76NY0L4qIrXCtvyagScQLkY0gdx0Q5SB9Lo-auXMH3ZKQSlh92sIoSSrWuxS8bfqKn-62Xwqr3eezwK0j2ntNffDdX9Wj/s1600/06_airplane-775175.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5lcquYkZcFHMLm2l7F1m2Uun9qUkF3pb3Hdw-vGC_pg1Tpvy76NY0L4qIrXCtvyagScQLkY0gdx0Q5SB9Lo-auXMH3ZKQSlh92sIoSSrWuxS8bfqKn-62Xwqr3eezwK0j2ntNffDdX9Wj/s320/06_airplane-775175.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518495140739466338" /></a></p><br>Here I am going to try to make a bold attempt at posting several pictures.<br><br>The first group is of the flight over. It was so long and cramped. However, they did give out lots of free booze and tons of food. There are a few pictures or all of us enjoy our food. Also, free toothbrushes and slippers! Pretty amazing.<br> <br>The second group includes adventures in our old boozh hotel. Notes that Reeb is beer backwards. Don't get excited, it tastes horrible. Poor Joey found that out the hard way.<br><br>Okay. There you go. Depending upon how cooperative the internet decides to be, hopefully you will see more pictures soon!<br> <br>Ann<br><br> Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2452953996418828226.post-39028571471292991892010-09-07T20:41:00.001-07:002010-09-07T20:41:50.479-07:00On time-lag and the downsides thereof<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFLrcbrrtgprwwu5axs8pfw_SnmVrabDtXAlzDKxZv-OtDaA2F9YM92jHagQNJMt7jMKJC2DG0JOmmTuukf-pANKWqs0JemZ2EXULG0uyXmsRu4hEfwPxVcsFUmomkAF0ofZKYHcdEmaWF/s1600/DSCI0037-710480.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFLrcbrrtgprwwu5axs8pfw_SnmVrabDtXAlzDKxZv-OtDaA2F9YM92jHagQNJMt7jMKJC2DG0JOmmTuukf-pANKWqs0JemZ2EXULG0uyXmsRu4hEfwPxVcsFUmomkAF0ofZKYHcdEmaWF/s320/DSCI0037-710480.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5514382865229066370" /></a></p>Clinic Schedule<br>My schedule for school is pretty busy even in China. We have to be on the bus to go to the hospital at 7:40. The hospital is pretty busy and each day we are assigned to a different doctor to follow. It is pretty interesting to see the patients and how the doctors prescribe herbs here. In general, dosages are much higher and formulas are also much larger then what we would use in the States. Currently, I am observing a dermatology shift. I have seen more on that shift then I have my whole time at Bastyr. The doctor that I have followed for the past two days is a specialist in Uticaria (allergic rashes). I am surprised how common it is here, however that could have to do with the doctor's specialty and the time of year. After the clinic shift, we all have a lecture together. It has been valuable, but by the end of the day we are all pretty tired. Early afternoon is also about when jet lag gets to be pretty difficult. Although, I have noticed that it has been better for me lately.<br> <br>Torrential downpour<br>It rained so hard here last Wednesday when I went to get Mike. I guess there was some kind of typhoon nearby and that resulted in pouring rain. There were two large cloud breaks. The first caught me totally off guard soaking my shoes and pants. Luckily I was able to huddle under Y Lan's umbrella and kept somewhat dry. I thought that we had rainstorms in Seattle, but that is nothing compared to what happens in China. It was pretty intense. When I went to pick up Mike it had started again and rain was falling so hard that the steps to the subway looked like a waterfall. There was loud thunder and you could see lightning everywhere. The streets were also flooding, but luckily this time I had sandals, umbrella and a rain jacket. I was prepared.<br> <br>Picking up Mike<br>Getting Mike from the airport went pretty smoothly. The subway system here is really clean, nice and easy to use. It did take a lot longer then I had planned, but luckily Mike's flight was delayed. It worked out pretty well. Unfortunately, the subway stops running at 9:00 so we had to take a cab home. Overall, it went pretty well.<br> <br>Airing of the belly (Dr Cao, Mike thinks it's great, Old Men, Ann thinks it's not great)<br>Mike typed up these paragraph headings for me. There is a strange, inexplicable habit that Shanghai men seem to have. It strikes those above thirty most often, but I have seen examples of it in men in their twenties as well. I know that it is hot out. I am also hot. But it isn't that, more a way to show off....?....that results in grown men walking down the streets with their shirts pulled up to display their bellies. Today, I saw a guy who was in his early twenties who had pulled up his shirt all the way to his chest. I don't understand. Why not just take it off?<br> <br>Dinner with Mike's Uncle + Aunt in Lujiazui (pudong, with the big buildings, looking across the river at the brightly lit Bund)<br>Was delicious. Probably the best meal that I have had in China so far. Every thing was fresh and amazing and the view was of the bund and beautiful.<br> <br>Swim<br>Our hotel (new place) has a pool! It is great! I went for a swim after clinic today and it was so refreshing. I feel spoiled staying in such a nice place. I guess we lucked out!<br><br>Sleepy. Well, I am going to attach a single picture. I wish I could send more, but have to wait for a better internet connection. Also, I can't actually navigate to my blog so I can't see comments or respond to anything. Please! Email me! I miss you guys and although I might be slow in replying, it would be fun to hear how things are going in Seattle.<br> <br>By the way, the have black Pabst here. I haven't been brave enough to drink it.<br><br>Ann<br> Annhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07874471790913688627noreply@blogger.com2