Robbed in Jianshui

I am at the border town of Hekou, and sick, after a few very tumultuous days. First off, on Saturday, I discovered the Vietnam consulate in San Francisco issued my Visa for the wrong dates. Their emergency email addresses all bounced and they have not responded to my messages on their emergency lines. I was forced to go off the itinerary and head to the border town a day early to get a new Visa with the correct dates. There is a girl here, who has connections (I still don't quite understand who she is or what she does), and she was able to turn it around in one day.

To add to the misfortune, I was robbed yesterday at a local market. The thief took my wallet and phone. He snapped the button of my front pocket with a knife and made the grab. I didn't feel it. I was buying lychee fruit with Emma. All of a sudden a very concerned Chinese lady holding a baby started speaking loudly at me and pointing. I thought she was begging or wanted me to buy something, but in a few seconds a crowd had gathered, so I elbowed Emma and asked her what the lady wanted. "You've just been robbed", she said, and I patted my pocket and felt nothing in it. My stomach dropped. The lady with the baby and others were wildly pointing in a direction, so we ran off and tried to see if we could see the thief, but had no luck. I used a local shop's phone to call my parents (2:00 a.m. their time!) and had them cancel my credit cards and phone. Emma flagged down some cops (in plain clothes, strangely enough) and they took us to the police station. The whitnesses had a good description of the man, and added that he robbbed the person next to me too.

The police station was a joke, with a bunch of (apparently) plain-clothed officers sitting around smoking. We came back later in the night to file a report (which was also a joke, illustrated by the reporting officer smoking a cigarette through a 3 foot water bong as we filled out the paperwork). They couldn't give me a copy of the report (which I need for insurance purposes!), but said I could write a letter accounting what happened, and they'd stamp their seal on it. I wrote the letter, Emma translated, and it was reviewed by superior officers while I went to the border town today. Emma picked it up, and said the police had changed my letter-- so I'll look forward to what 'creative' changes they made.

The wallet was also turned in today, without the cash... and, of course, now all my credit cards are canceled.

The hotel we were at was the only one so far lacking internet access. I used the dial-up at the front desk and attempted to Western Union Money to myself. As I was doing it-- I kid you not-- the power went off.

So I was in the dark-- moneyless, communication-less, and without a valid Visa for Tuesday. I used Emma's phone to call my parents, and coordinate a money x-fer. After several hours, about 2 a.m. here, the money was transferred. I went to bed and got up 3 hours later to catch the 6:30 bus to to Hekou.

To make matters EVEN worse, I am sick now, throwing up, with a temperature of 101. With my luck, I'll be sitting in a Vietnamese quarantine room tomorrow, waving my group goodbye as they move on to Sapa.

I also have to pick up my money x-fer tomorrow. Hope that goes well. Ha.

I have some great things to post, once I'm out of China, get my affairs in order, and can legally upload to this blog and YouTube (censored in China).

But, for the record: I am OK, have a FANTASTIC guide who is doing everything she can for me, and am accompanied by a very supportive group. Though times are a tough right now, I am well taken care of, and things will be fine.

Yangshuo

After our longest overnight train ever (26 hours), we arrived in Yangshuo-- a beautiful small tourist town about 2 hours north of the train station. Unfortunately it rained on and off during our 2 day stay there and many of our activities had to be canceled. Never-the-less, we managed to squeeze in some rain-friendly things like water-caving, a countryside bicycle tour, and Commerant night fishing (plus a few hours of Chinese therapeutic massage :)

In and around Yangshuo

Bicycle tour
















Commerant fishing


The Commerant night fishing -- where the birds are tied to the canoe and 'chased'. The birds dip into the water and grab small fish in their gullet.


The birds have their neck loosely tied so they cannot swallow the larger fish. The fisherman then pulls the bird in and grabs the fish. Cruel by American standards.

Now fluent with chopsticks

The world expo in Shanghai

Every five years years or so a World Expo is held in a deginated int'l host city, and lasts around six months. This round it's in Shanghai and I went and checked it out. Each nation creates a pavillion to glorify itself and all it offers the world. This year there were heavy environmental themes.

The American pavillion (which the American volunteers said was underfunded and sucked, so I did not go in)

The hustle and bustle inside the Italian pavillion.


Outside England's pavillian

The expo would have been excellent, except for the Chinese people. All of us were thuroughly discusted at how rude and ill-mannered they are in crowds. They push and they fight, and will do anything else to squeeze ahead in line. They have almost no sense of personal space and will breathe down your neck, even if there's room to spread out. The Chinese military was out in force to simply act as line-keepers. We literally had to form a human wall to keep them at bay and hold our ground, all day. The lines were long and the population, representative of China as a whole was 99% Hahn Chinese ethnicity. We were very worn and irritated by the end of the day-- all in all the experience was a wash, I'd say.

Randomness and Shanghai

The kitties at our hostel in Xi'an






Funny English translations (that are all too common, unfortunately)











Last night we arrived in a canal town just outside of Shanghai. It looked something like the lagoon or Pirates at Disney Land. Beautiful, and authentic though. We took a canoe around the canal and then went for a bite -- tonight we dined on snails and frog legs (which was actually the whole frog). I had had escargot in Paris before, but the frog seriously...tastes like chicken. I'm almost getting used to these Chinese banquet dinners, and browsing menus filled with the likes of whole fish, duck's feet, sea cucumbers, and chicken heads.

Then we went out to a bar on the water and played a Chinese dice drinking game that got everyone thoroughly "happy". They had Chinese karaoke and I partook. The book contained exactly one western song with lyrics in English -- Frank Sinatra's Fly Me To the Moon. Apparently I was a big hit with the locals and they invited our group over to come drink with them. So we had a lot of fun, with Emma translating most of the night.

Today we arrived in Shanghai and went to the legendary acrobatics show. I took some artsy pics of it:

The acrobatics show in Shanghai


A guy and girl doing a silk rope act


Same.


5 motorcycles in 'The Ball of Death.'


The finale.

Various.

In the Xi'an streets.


The two Chilean bros., Raoul and Daniel, and me.


The canal town






A craw-fish holding a cigarette.


The bar in the canal town that we got drunk in.

In Xi'an, and diatribe

The next day after the great wall, we had the afternoon back in town, where I visited the Llama Temple -- which houses the largest Buddha (Guinness Book certified!) in the world.


Tallest Buddha in the world.

Then I took a venture over to the Silk Market, which is like a giant counterfeit-goods swap meet. You can buy rip-offs of every designer label-- clothes, shoes, purses, jewelry, and more. I bartered down a Polo brand polo shirt from ¥250 to ¥50 ($7.50) ... looks real! We'll see if it lasts more than a couple washes :)

In the evening, we headed over to the train station to take our first overnight train (11 hours) to Xi'an. The experience was not pleasant. Lots of Chinese school children (age about 14-15) in our car, and the 'hard sleeper' sleeps six to a compartment. Very cramped and pretty uncomfortable. We have a 16 hour one to Shanghai and a 26 hour one after that! -- dreading the thought.

Once we arrived in the city, we went to a history museum and saw a 500 ft. pagoda called 'The Big Wild Goose Pagoda.' We didn't go in, as our guide said there wasn't much to see. But at the museum we had an interesting experience-- us white people were discriminated against! Who woulda thunk that was possible in this Universe? ...we had small day packs and purses that they said we couldn't bring in and that we needed to check at rental lockers a bit away. However they were letting Chinese nationals in with massive bags. I held mine up to one, to show it was considerably smaller, and he waved his hand and said 'Not same.' lol. so we checked our bags. O, the adversity us white people must face.


Me and a statue, in the park surrounding The Big Wild Goose Pagoda.

When I mentioned this to Emma (our guide, real name pronounced San-Wee) later that night, she assured us it must've been a misunderstanding because the Chinese 'don't do that.' And our day tour guide (also named Emma) today also said the same, very dismissively. In fact, all sensitive racial and political stuff is pretty much not talked about here, or done so very pensively. I asked our Emma how the communistic components of govt. inter-operated with the (very aggressive, and thriving) free market I see all around me. She said she didn't know... nobody really knows what's going on in gov't or how it works, other than the fundamental structure of it. And they don't seem to concern themselves with it. They validate the policy as necessary to keep the dissidents in the large population from manipulating the media, or from the media inducing people to over-react to events and destabilize the country. I love the culture and people's general attitude and outlook in China -- it's just them not being informed about (what I view as) basic political information that doesn't sit right with me. It's not that I disapprove, it's just I worry about the prospects of their long-term ability to maintain stability with such a policy always looming in the backdrop.

...

Today we went and saw the Terracotta Warriors, the proposed 'Eighth Wonder of the World.' Discovered by a farmer digging a well in the seventies, the govt. later uncovered (and is still uncovering) a massive memorial site to the First Emperor, Qin (pronounced Ching, who ruled around 200 b.c.), that houses over 8,000 life-sized terracotta soldiers. The soldiers were to protect him in the afterlife.


I like this pic. Inside one of the Terracotta Warrior pits.

Then tonight we had a banquet dumpling dinner followed by a stage show depicting music and dance from the Tang Dynasty (around 600-900 a.d.). However it was very gimmicky and camp, a tourist attraction unfortunately. The music was not authentic. It used Western classical music as a foundation and glazed over the top with oriental scales. I explained this to Lori, and she was like, "Aaron, you are the only one that cares about this sort of thing." lol, so i've just given the short version in my blog :)

Taking a bike trip along the city walls tomorrow morning, then off on an overnight train to Shanghai!

From the Great Wall to Xi'an

Dinner -- Our 2nd night in Beijing

I just arrived at our hostel in Xi'an (shee-an) and much to my amazement there is WiFi in the room! ...so I can kinda continue my hermit-ness :) Nah, I'm due back out to meet the group in 45 minutes or so.


A lot has happened the last few days. On Sunday, I went to the Panjiayuan Markets, which is a vast sprawling open market, probably a couple football fields big. Merchants come to the stalls and lay down blankets on the weekends to sell their wares -- trinkets, artwork, books, pottery, beads, you name it. I bought some canvas oriental paintings and a few 60's era anti-American, pro-Vietnam propaganda posters. All in all, I spent about ¥300 (yuan) or about $45. Our guide book says they often set the price 10 times higher for Westerners, so you have to bargen down. On the most beutiful and largest original piece I bought (a landscape featuring a Chinese Elm) he started the price off at ¥580 and we ended up at ¥150. But it cost me ¥125 to mail these works back to myself :(

The next day we hit up the Great Wall and hiked 12.8 Kilometers on it. And this is no walk on the treadmill. We were climbing up and down fragmented, steap steps the whole way. My legs were shaking at the end and I slept like a baby that night at the hostel next to the wall.



I will have to finish this entry later as I have to make a few calls and leave soon!