Xian

Day 14

We were supposed to see the terra cotta warriors today but last night our flight was delayed until 1:20AM, didn't board until after that, then we had the flight itself and a long ride from the airport to the hotel, so by the time we checked in it was 4:30 in the morning. Nobody was feeling ready for a two hour trip in each direction. Instead we slept in.

Ray and Donna had seen the Warriors the day before and showed us pictures. I was disappointed but Andrea had wanted to cut the warriors from the itinerary anyway. In fact, it was the only item on the trip that I had insisting on. Andrea joked that as long as we'd seen the pictures we could pretend that we've seen it.

Andrea and I woke up to people being noisy in the hallway outside our hotel room at 9:00AM, giving me a luxurious four and a half hours of sleep. The Chinese often see people behaving boisterously and say "they are free." I heard it about the rowdy audience at the Guangzhou Opera House and several times about my own children as they sang, danced, and kibitzed. I have resisted any temptation to discuss the difference between the ability to be loud and real freedom.

We dressed, tried to wake the kids, managed to get Zachary, and met Donna and Ray in the lobby. We ate next door: black rice porridge, a scallion crepe filed with undercooked shredded potato and another crepe with leek and egg. Zachary got scallion pancakes but took two third of it to his brothers.

After breakfast we toured the Wild Goose Pagoda compound, which had a working Buddhist monastery, and a variety of Buddhist and Taoist shrines, including one that depicted Budas life carved in jade on three walls and buildings with large golden statues of Buda, his disciples, and the Taoist god of money. It was an odd juxtaposition, Buda calling greed one of the three evils in a story carved in jade and a God of money and fortune to worship just across the courtyard.

The legend behind the Pagoda was that there are two groups of Buddhists, one that ate meat and another that was vegetarian. The meat eaters saw a flock of geese overhead, thought about how they had no meat, asked God for meat, and one of the geese immediately fell out of the sky with a broken wing. This made the group that age meat decide to become vegetarians too.

After the temple we ate lobby in a food court. I ordered nothing, just having the kids leftover green beans, dumplings, and red bean smoothie.

We went back to the hotel where Andrea and Donna exercised while the kids played video games at the mall. Li Feng, Evan, and I hung in the room and I caught posting to this blog up to yesterday.

After the kids returned we checked out, jammed ourselves and our suitcases into a van, and headed for the train station. We bought dinner from street vendors. Joshua was very happy with his fried vegetable sandwich, which he declared the best sandwich he had eaten in his entire life.

We're taking the sleeper train to Chengdu. Each car has three levels of thin bunks. There was much discussion amongst members of my family about the frequency with which the bedding was laundered and the provenance of various stains. Lights out is 10pm.

Everything we asked of the kids was an argument this evening. Joshua was apoplectic when Andrea said no to a second sandwich, Ari would not take no for an answer when told not to go into the station without us or when told not to climb on the luggage racks in the train. Joshua would not defer plugging his phone in to charge until after helping get the luggage up. They wouldn't calm down and stop being giddy which made the evening very hard.

Lights out was at 10 pm and with earplugs I fell asleep almost instantly, once Joshua stopped fussing with his cell charger. I woke at 4am, nose stuffed, and lay in bed for a while thinking about photoshoots before finishing this entry and reading a bit more of The Goldfinch. I went back to sleep around 5 until the noises of people waking up woke me again at 6:20AM.

Fenghuang

Day 13

We arrived in Fenghuang last night. After a few attempts to find our hotel, which included the driver going through a night market and then backing out of the dead end we hit, we finally arrived at a parking lot, got out of the van, and began dragging our luggage through a maze of market stalls, narrow alleys, and stone paths to get the rest of the way. The town uses a sewage system that I'm sure would not be allowed in any western country and you can really smell it in places.

The hotel's small front garden and lobby merge into each other almost seamlessly. It is beautiful, with ponds and a small waterfall, hanging basket chairs, and a friendly large golden furred dog, that was not too bright. He and Evan were scared of each other and so he tried to hide under a chair, didnt quite fit and got stuck for a minute.

Andrea and the kids were put off by the horrible stench in the stairwell and the insects buzzing around the hallway light. I calmed the kids and got them settled into their room, which was perfectly nice inside when Andrea joined me and declared, "I can't sleep here. I'm going to get bedbug bites." I calmed her too and then struggled to figure it how to turn off the TV. Since I couldn't turn it off with the remote I ended up finding the power switch on the actual TV. By the time we turned in for the night I was so keyed up that it took me a while to fall asleep but I slept well, only waking when Andrea got up around eight.

We packed up and went walking. We ate breakfast from a cross between a street food vendor and a restaurant. I had some rice noodles, fried tofu, little balls stuffed with black sesame, and I even tried some of Li Feng's stinky tofu. It was not as bad as it sounds; tasted like a charcoal briquette.

The city is quaint, lots of old buildings around a river with pretty bridges and boats that you can hire. The place is a tourist trap, with a million opportunities to get your photo taken in native costume or buy a souvenir. I noticed small brass Eifel towers for sale and asked about them. They "are for the people who can not go all the way to Paris."

Parts of the wall that once surrounded the city to defend the indigenous Miao against the Han still stand, though most of it was dismantled during WWII when they determined that walled cities are too hard to evacuate, were too easy to bomb, and were to hard to retake once occupied by the enemy. We passed one establishment that had half a dozen signs saying that Japanese people would not be allowed, in English, Chinese, and Japanese.

We ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant: two kinds of greens, spicy cucumber, and a fish hot pot. The fish was pretty full of bones and hard to eat so I tried to stuff myself with vegetables, failed, and supplemented with frozen yogurt, which was fine until my blood sugar plummeted, so now I am starving. I'm sure I'll end up eating far too many of the walnut cakes that we bought. They were made on a small machine. A person puts a few small pieces of walnut in a mold which then moves along, has a squirt of batter sprayed in each half, has a bit of filling squirted in, is flipped closed, cooks for a bit, is moved up a row and heads in the opposite direction, is flipped over to finish cooking, and is finally unloaded by hand by the person who puts in more nuts and the process repeats.

I've tried to limit my pauses for picture taking because Andrea is impatient and complains or more often just forges ahead without me and I'm tired of running to catch up. Now, however, she's complaining that I'm taking pictures of all the same things that she is. She just started a blog to try to be more like me and I'm sure that I'll blog a lot of the same topics that she does. You can check her blog out at bozokiblog.blogspot.com

Li Feng decided that we should take the train back, because last night's van ride was so uncomfortable. Perhaps it is my aching back, the sore throat that is back now that my Naproxin has worn off, or my general tiredness from trying to get Andrea to be less upset about her inability to communicate and to get the boys to stop complaining about everything but comfortable is one of the last words I'd use to describe these seats or this train in general.

We were met at the station by another van because the one with our luggage wasnt there yet. We went to dinner at a Korean BBQ. After dinner we went to the airport where I'm writing this now. Flights are being delayed and canceled because of heavy rain. Our flight is supposed to leave at 1:20AM now but Andrea is betting that it will be canceled. I am trying to ignore my hunger and the sore throat that has morphed into a stuffed nose, sneezes, and burning eyes. Strike that; I gave in and binged on pistachios, walnut cakes, and caramel corn.

Tianmen Mountain

Day 12

 

We got out of the hotel a bit later than we intended to because Andrea had some stomach pain. We headed to a cable car ride that took us to the top. Each gondola seated eight and the ride was really long. Andrea read somewhere that the ride was 4 miles but it didn't seem that far. The line to get on the cable car was undoubtedly that long, however. I've seen lines for popular Disney attractions that were shorter.

The scenery was impressive, we walked along paths that wound along the sides of the steepest cliffs I've ever seen. We took a chair lift from one peak to another, watching the forest pass below. We ate at the top of the second peak. We got boiled corn this time and it was slightly less like a pencil eraser in texture than the roast corn was but it had the same taste. I honestly have no idea how they can do that to corn. Andrea thinks they grow it that way.

 

The entire day I have had a low grade store throat and headache but I refuse to let it affect me.

We came down by a combination of escalators and busses, but Ari and I climbed down 800 steps in the middle. The bus was cool, winding through a copious number of switchbacks on the side of the mountain. I dozed a bit, not much because of my back pain, and Andrea slept on my shoulder.

We got back in the van to head to the next city. It's a four hour drive and is already 6:30 so Andrea and Li Feng went to a grocery store and bought a variety of fruit, bread, marinated eggs, cucumber, milk, beef jerky, peanut butter, rice pudding, sausage, desserts, and a bag of chopsticks. We ate while traveling.

Andrea was horrified to learn that the long drive was only about 100 miles but we had to take local roads, full of goats, dogs, pedestrians, three wheeled vehicles, and other obstacles including a couple of places where the road was dug up and we had to go over dirt as rutted as anything I've seen in Guatemala, which had the worst roads I've seen so far.

After dinner Evan had a huge tantrum and Joshua freaked out over it. Between Joshua always being upset with Evan and Andrea frustrated with the lack of translation and difficulty communicating I am constantly worried that we're going to insult Li Feng who has meticulously planned this part of the trip, bends over backwards to make sure that we are comfortable and carries Evan up and down mountains or through hot cities for hours every day. For all their complaints, Evan is a trooper, napping in little bits and pieces while in a car or being carried and we can't be a picnic with our picky eating and the kids constant complaints.

I began to read The Goldfinch as we drove through rural China, my throat burning, and Andrea on her laptop working.

Zhangjiajie

Day 11

I had trouble falling asleep after all the excitement last night and woke up again at 6:40 to pouring rain. We ate breakfast at the hotel buffet. There were some sort of sunflower seed cookies that I loved. Tomorrow I'm bringing bottled water with me.

 

The kids slept until we woke them at 8:00 but remained in bed until 8:30 when I read them the riot act and even then they took their time getting ready.

 

Li Feng made some calls and found somebody who was willing to pick up the laundry, do it, and return it to the hotel for $50. Andrea was pretty upset at the expense but I pointed out that some things have been less expensive than we thought they would be, especially food, so it will all even out in the end.

I'm not sure what time we finally left the hotel but it was far later than usual. As soon as we set foot outdoors we were accosted by vendors selling cheap rain ponchos and umbrellas. I bought 6 of the ponchos for under $5 and Andrea bought Zachary a new umbrella.

 

The ponchos were so thin that they began falling apart immediately. Zach's had a hole in minutes. Only 4 of the 6 lasted the day. So much here is disposable and wasteful. The Chinese go through an incredible amount of plastic; they buy bottled water because they don't trust the trap water, for example. And, there is so much litter it's horrific. It covers the streets and is washed into the rivers. I saw hundreds of discarded items today alone, much of it discarded cheap rainwear, including plastic ponchos just like ours and shoe covers made of the same material which we declined to buy even though they were offered.

We headed or to the park, which had an entrance within walking distance. We entered via a gondola on a lift, just like a ski lift although nobody could ski these vertical slopes even if there was snow. We ascended through the rain and cloud catching fuzzy glimpses of the spectacular landscape. Sandstone columns rose hundreds of meters straight up. We spent the day going from overlook to overlook, traveling by a set of free busses in the park, hiking at each stop. There were places where the land looked through a cloud and it was hard to believe that you weren't looking at an island floating in a pool. The weather was less than ideal. The kids whined.

We ate street food at stalls along the road at lunch time because Andrea was hungry and wanted to try things. We got four ears of roasted corn that were a marvel. They not only managed to get it to the texture of pencil eraser they got the flavor too. I gamely ate mine as Andrea tried to convince Zachary to keep eating his, telling him that the texture was intentional and that they got the flavor by caramelizing the corn, even making a couple of supportive comments about how much I love roasted corn, though I didn't mention this one's peculiarities. We also got some sort of steamed mochi ball wrapped in a leaf filed with a peanut sesame mixture. Andrea took one bite and let me have the rest. Zachary and I got red bean buns. They were died out, hard on the bottom and crusty on the top. I gamely ate as Zachary extolled it's virtues while Andrea tried barbecued fish on a stick (they put anything on a stick, including whole fish) and declared it so salty as to be inedible. Far and away the worst meal that I have had in China.

We kept trekking. I tried to get some photos through the fog. I miss doing serious photography something fierce. Every time I take a shot I fall behind and Andrea is always ahead anyway. I've had to yell for her several times when she got ahead of not just me but the guide and gone the wrong way.

Just as it was starting to clear a bit Andrea declared that she was done. I went to take a few shots from one last overlook and as soon as I was within 20 feet she took off, kids in tow to get in line. I just couldn't face running after her one more time and of course the consequence was that a Chinese couple got between me and the group. Zachary desperately wanted me to join the group but I refused to push my way through once again to catch up to my wife.

We rode a glass elevator down the side of a 326 meter vertical mountain. They let people in in groups of about 20 but only about half get to stand right next to the window so people ran and pushed. Some guy behind me tried to push me aside and I was having none of it. I body blocked him and then got squarely in front of him, incensed at his rudeness. When I got in the guide, who had saved a window spot on the side, switched with me. Half way down Andrea said "that guy just pushed his way right in," and I noticed that Mr. pushy had forced himself in between two of my kids.

Li Feng, the guide and I, took a monorail ride around the valley and then followed Andrea and the kids home.

After a little downtime, we headed out for dinner. The kids really wanted American food so we found a place called Cat cafe. Li Feng, Evan, and our guide split off to eat Chinese. We had pizza (no sauce; not our choice, fruit on the side; that was our choice) and pumpkin chicken rice. It was my second last favorite meal in China. On our way home we passed a place that did foot rubs and back massage. I would have loved a back rub since the time I spend hunched over a screen leaves me with a near constant pain in my back but Andrea was dead set on using the first place we had seen that morning which only did feet (for reasons not entirely clear to me) so I went home and when she and Zachary finished we sorted the clean laundry and packed. I slept really soundly but woke up at 6:40 and was just awake for the day despite my best efforts to go back to sleep.

Milk Fragrant Purple potato mud

Day  10 


I woke at 5 because a couple of cars decided to have a honking competition outside the hotel, went back to sleep, woke at 5:30 because Andrea decided it was too bright and got up to close the curtains, went back to sleep, woke at 6:30 because the tour was leaving at 7:30 to try to avoid G20 traffic so they put in a wake up call for the whole group even though we are leaving the tour today. I had trouble getting back to sleep.

At 7:00 Andrea woke up and we decided to go down to breakfast. The buffet was the biggest yet. There was something that they called pumpkin pie that was never served at any Thanksgiving table; glutinous orange squares. We both liked the "milk fragrant purple potato mud," purple mashed potato with a touch of vegetables and a thin cheese topping. The mung bean buns were particularly good.

We sat with a woman who we befriended on the tour, an endocrinologist from Redwood city and her nine year old daughter. Zach spent a lot of the bus ride playing with her and she was disappointed not to be able to say goodbye to him because we were letting him sleep as long as we could. 
After breakfast we checked out and boarded a van that Li Feng hired for the morning. We drove through horrible traffic, with pedestrians, cyclists, and small three wheeled vehicles in the road, several coming right at us in the wrong direction on our side of the road. Drivers play chicken all of the time, forcing themselves into adjacent lanes and honking often. We arrived at the morning's destination, a large market area that had hundreds of stores selling silk. Some of the silk was clearly fake, fabric in a bag that said 100% silk in big letters that had a small tag sewn to the cloth inside that read 100% rayon. Others are the real deal. Li Feng coached Andrea in the art of negotiation, explaining that we should pay about half of the sticker price. Andrea had no trouble knocking more than half off the price of everything she bought.

I thought that this activity was designed primarily for somebody other than me and the boys but Zachary found a replacement for the blankie that he was given at birth by Sparrow Hospital and loved until it was lost on a trip years ago and Joshua bought a fan. I thought that I could do some cool things with a model and some of the fabrics and started to say so to Andrea but only got a far as "You know some of these..." before she cut me off with "yeah, there was one back there that was really cool.  It had a whole tree pattern on it..." I let it go.

Laden with silks and other pretty baubles we hopped back into the van and headed to the airport in traffic that was surprisingly light. The airport security was efficient and caught every water bottle we had missed in our backpacks and the can of insect repellant we had goofed and not packed in a checked bag.

The plane was delayed, as was our last flight; apparently most domestic flights in China are. We ate shrimp dumplings, cucumbers, and plums while we waited. 
This plane flight reminds me that on our last flight Andrea showed me an email that she got saying that she had been promoted to professor. I didn't want to steal her thunder but she isn't one to toot her own horn, so I'll do it for her because I am immensely proud of her.

We landed in Zhangjiajie, were met at the airport by a guide, and had our usual exciting ride to the hotel. This is where Avatar was filmed and even from the van the scenery was amazing, lush green mountains, trees clinging to their steep slopes, disappearing into the clouds. In a way it reminds me of Sedona, a landscape so beautiful that it is surreal. Since we've been going to Sedona for years it is full of happy memories for me.

We checked in and headed to dinner. We had beef in a wok, kept warm on the table by a small fire, peanuts, cucumber, green beans, eggplant, and some pickled vegetables (radishes and a local bean). Unfortunately, the beef dish had chunks of beef fat that we picked out as we ate. After dinner we strolled along the street, stopping in shops to buy fruit, a razor, and nail clippers.  We approached what looked like a pet shop with rabbits, birds, and a huge rodent that I didn't recognize in cages and frogs, snakes, turtles, and fish in plastic tubs. It turned out to be a restaurant and the "pets" were the food. I wanted to look at the rodent but Andrea and Joshua were really upset so we hustled past. WeÕve since seen lots of restaurants using the same technique of displaying their ingredients including snails, clams, crayfish, crabs, and vegetables.
We were getting desperate for laundry but Li Feng and the guide both told us that there was no such thing as a laundromat in China. The hotels charge by the piece of clothing and 10 days of laundry for five people at hotel prices would be over $100 US so we bought some detergent, deciding that we'd just do it in the sink and let it air dry.

Andrea went first and carefully instructed the kids on what to do. While I started my laundry she went to the next room to help Zachary with his because he was having difficulties.  I got a sink full washed and decided to rinse and wring in a few batches. After rinsing the first batch, I set about trying to wring them out. I took one shirt wrung it but wanted to get more water out. I pressed it up against the sink and applied pressure. I was completely shocked when the entire porcelain sink fell out of the counter and smashed on the floor with a loud crash, scattering pieces everywhere. I was mortified, beyond upset, so I went and got Andrea who went and got Li Feng, who went and got the guide, who went and got somebody from hotel reception, who went and got the hotel manager, who went and got a maintenance man and two maids and then moved us one room over. I don't think I've been so embarrassed since Joshua poked an obese guy in the belly, looked up at him, and shouted "Dad, you lied to me. You told me that men couldn't get pregnant." at the age of five.
I finished doing that sink full of laundry in the new room. I Google mapped "laundry near me" on my cell, which is currently getting data and found half a dozen places. Li Feng is going to call them in the morning. 

West Lake, New friends, amusement park

Day 9

We woke up and went to a hotel breakfast that was traditional Chinese. We tried a rice cake bun shaped like a star that was great. I've also been able to try a lot of new fruit, there was one that looked like a fuzzy dark red golf ball that we bought from a street vendor that was fantastic it tasted sort of like a cross between cherry and raspberry. This morning I tried longanberries (not to my taste) and some grape shaped dried red fruit that I liked.

After breakfast Li Feng, Evan, and I went for a walk along the canal. It was a lot less crowded and the weather was less unpleasant. The last couple of days have been in the mid 90s and humid but at 8AM it took me at least 5 minutes to start pouring sweat.

We got back on our bus and headed to a tea plantation where they demonstrated tea making and packaging and fed us an enormous lunch. A few of the dishes are things I am beginning to think of as typical: eggs with tomato, mushrooms, pork. There were also half a dozen new dishes to try, including new dishes with chicken and fish.

After the tea Plantation lunch we went to a Chinese amusement park that had various recreations of rich men's houses and themed attractions that fell sort of flat. The haunted houses were walked, single file, but so poorly lit that we had trouble seeing our way and eventually the Chinese people around us used their phones as a flashlights which improved it greatly. It claimed to be the most popular such park in China with 7 million visitors a year. The heat was intense, about 100 degrees. I bought a mung bean and green tea popsicle.

Fortunately we were befriended by six Chinese people about Joshua's age who explained things, like the red ribbons hung on bridges that symbolized wishes of couples. Hanging out with them turned what would have been an awful hot day into a great one. I had a great time inappropriately teasing the young women who asked to take pictures with us until Andrea made me quit. We did take some nice pictures and they promised to email them to me and to friend me on Facebook.

After the amusement park we went to West Lake (there are 800 West Lakes in China but this is the most famous). We rode around the lake in a boat, seeing the town on one side and the mountains on the others, thethree lucky stones featured on the back of a one Yuan bill, and the three famous causeways built about a thousand years ago. We were then given an opportunity to walk along one of the causeways but even though the temperature had dropped to 99 (feels like 124, according to Google) Andrea, Zachary and I sat on a bench and watched the world go by.

We picked a particularly hot year to visit according to or if our new Chinese acquaintances. I am trying not to take it personally that Andrea said things in the heart of the day like "I can't stand to touch you."

On the way back to the bus Ari adjudication for a huge mango and ice cream concoction. I bought two. Neither got finished but they are delicious and helped us cool off.

We checked into the hotel in Hangzhou and went to look for dinner. We ran into four of our new friends in the elevator and they joined us. We ate at the closest reasonably priced restaurant that we could find. Our friends helped us order and when we finished the waitress declared that we had not ordered enough for nine people. We said that they should choose dishes and after some debate they ordered a couple.

We've noticed a few things about Chinese restaurants. First, there is always good leftover, a lot of food, enough to feed another 4 or 5 people. Second, no matter what you order, they always fail to bring something. Today it was a vegetable dish that I asked for, yesterday it was bottled water that we asked for three times, the day before that it was a fruit salad. Third, they often wrap each place seeing in shrink wrap. Fourth, they serve a lot of boiled water and a lot of tea at every meal and the Chinese people drink very little of either.

After dinner, Joshua headed off with our new friends and Andrea and I went back to the hotel.

Lingering Garden and Wuzhen

Day 8

When Andrea finally woke up (or actually was women by the phone) we got ready for the day. The hotel had a razor that I used to shave for the first time since we got here. We ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant which had a huge assortment of cuisine, Japanese, Chinese, and traditional western breakfasts. Andrea and I tried something called sago lamp that was like sold tapioca disks with red bean filling which Andrea loved.

We then boarded the bus and headed to the Lingering garden which was a private garden of a rich family and their living quarters. The gardens are beautiful with lid of rocks from a lake 60kms away. The taller, thinner, and more filed with holes the more prestigious it was considered. The garden also had bamboo, the oldest ginkgo tree in China (600 years) and a bonsai garden tended by 18 gardeners. It was beautiful.

The original owner of the house had 5 wives and 11 children. If any were half as good as mine then he was a very lucky man.

We tagged along with an English speaking guides for group and the kids actually learned a bit. Andrea and I had a rare moment of disagreement about enforcing good behavior. It is a good thing that child rearing differences don't count as arguments of we'd be up to six.

After the gardens we went to lunch. I particularly liked the greens, bamboo shots, mushrooms, and eggs with tomato. There was a delicious fish in sweet and sour sauce but it was deep fried so I ate little of it. The fish was sliced so that pieces protruded, battered, and fried whole so that you could pull off pieces with your chopsticks.

Street lunch most of the group went boating but we stayed behind and had coffee, bubble tea, and browsed the small shops.

The entire day the weather ranged from pouring rain to drizzle. I didn't take a single photo but Joshua took a lot of video.

OK, I need to amend the last paragraph because I wrote that on the very long bus ride to Wuzhen and I ended up taking lots of pictures. Wuzhen was a huge place, full of cobblestone streets alongside canals. There were restaurants, shops, and artisans that demonstrated how things were made hundreds of years ago. They made silk and dyed fabric. Singers sung traditional songs as we ate dinner. We walked and browse the shops, taking in the sights, masking or way through the crowd to the far end of the village where we boarded a traditional Chinese boat and were propelled by a man in the back, pushing a huge rudder like thing back and forth, to our hotel. We all agreed that it was one of the most beautiful places Wed ever visited.

Our hotel is worth some comment. Each room is laid out with an ante chamber and a long hallway off of which the kids a bathroom and two bedrooms. They have is two key cards each of which opened the main for and one of the two bedrooms, allowing them to rent the room as a double or two singles. The accommodations are nice, but the A/C didn't work in our first room forcing us to move to a new room. The little toiletries were cute and included a wooden comb and a sewing of in a small decorative wooden case, which was a nice touch.

I went to sleep at 11am slept very soundly all night.

I can no longer get my VPN to work at all which leaves me with access to Facebook and blogger only from my cell, on which restrictions are relaxed because I have a foreign sim card. However, the cell only had 2G, which along with slow Chinese Internet is so painful to use that it's hardly worth it. We could upgrade to 3G for $25 a week per line or to 4G for $50 but we've decided that is just too expensive.

Day 7

Andrea and I woke at 5:30. Since the alarm was set for 6 anyway I declared that it was hardly worth going back to sleep but Andrea replied "yes it is," rolled over and went to sleep. I decided to get outof bed and read a bit The Art Thief, a novel I bought on Kindle long ago but never got around to reading.

We got packed up and left the hotel by 6:30, reversing the long walk through the old city with luggage and the van ride from a couple of days ago. Our plane ride was uneventful but long. I finished The Art Thief on the plane. It was a rollicking page Turner but several things bothered me about it, ranging from being excessively predictable in places to a piece of plot that just made no sense. We landed, and went to the hotel by bus. We're staying at the crown Plaza and the contrast with our last hotel couldn't be more stark. You could fit the entirety of the last place in the lobby with room to spare.

We ate a snack from the convenience store across the street and went into town. We stopped the old Temple (now a shopping area) and Amy go to the teahouse on the top floor of one of the buildings where we fit great views of the whole cut. Then we walked to the riverfront before eating dinner at a take out sushi place. I'd talk more about dinner but I don't want to increase the argument count to 6.

The city is bustling. The skyline is very impressive and many of the skyscrapers have interesting shapes. The city is much more cosmopolitan. I saw more noon Chinese in a few hours than I've seen in the entire time since Hong Kong. Nobody asks to take their picture with us although a couple of teenage girls practice their English on me before giving and running away.

We took a taxi back to the hotel and I struggled with the Internet for half an hour but the firewall is completely uncooperative. I went to sleep, exhausted around 11am woke at 4:30. Andrea wood briefly at 5:15 but even though I offered to entertain her she went right back to sleep.

A couple of notes:

Andrea is threatening to start annotating this blog with this that she thinks that I have been wrong about. She claims that we've had more than 5 arguments. If argue it but I doubt it is worth having argument number six over.

I haven't yet posted any pictures, partly because of the intent speed, or lack thereof but also because I have limited ability to edit. I've been shooting mostly snapshots of the family. I figure that there are plenty of great skyline pictures in the world taken with the best equipment, so what's the point of me adding ones taken in a rush, with a small handheld camera and every time I stop to take one the group charges ahead. I would love to take a trip with equipment and time to shoot one day. I'm still getting some interesting shots, especially textures that I might be able to use in composites some day.

I feel like I'm not doing as good a job on this blog as I did on past trips, perhaps because in an effort not to embarrass sensitive teens I'm omitting much of the family dynamics, perhaps because of the jet lag, or maybe it is just the difficulty of writing and editing on a tablet. I did not want to lug my heavy laptop, risk breaking it, have it infected with mallard, etc. I thought about buying a really lightweight alternative like a Surface but couldn't justify the expense, so I'm stuck on an android tablet.

There are many choices to be made when planning a vacation. I prefer to stay in one place for a long time, to get to know people and see how they live. Andrea prefers to move. She wants to see all the sights. Since she and Donna planned this trip it is definitely more of a see everything itinerary. In the past we've done mixture, like our trip to Greece when we spent two weeks seeing many of the major sites and then two weeks living with a family on the sleepy little island of Kalymnos.

Another choice is between major cities, small towns, and rural areas. Andrea and Joshua want to be in big cities but Donna and Li Feng planned more small town days. When you live in Beijing I guess that big city sites just aren't as exciting as they are coming from Okemos.

Water Village and Leaping Tiger Gorge

We wake up early and eat at the Chinese buffet. It is a rushed breakfast because we have a bus tour. We get on a bus and head to Water Village. When we get there Ari put pulls my camera from his backpack and starts taking pictures in the parking lot.

I'm very happy to have my camera back but the battery is almost empty so I won't get many pictures today.

The village is a recreation of a traditional Naxi Village with ancient artifacts and brass lamps that you can light and put in little nooks in the earthen walls. After the village Andrea and the boys go horseback riding while I go hiking along a spring feed tributary of the Yangtze. We start at the spring and work our way all the way to the river.

At the river everyone meets up and most go on a zodiac ride. Andrea and I wait on shore, getting a chance to talk.

For lunch at the tour guide had arranged a traditional Naxi grill but the charcoal grills are so smoky that the group rebels and we go to a traditional Chinese place.

After lunch we head to Leaping Tiger Gorge. The way there wound through valleys so steep it looks like a Norwegian fjord. The sides of the mountains are dark green. Earlier We thought that the landscape looked like Colorado but this was far more verdant and the topography was much more impressive.

The gorge, once we parked, was stunning. We hiked thousands of steps to the bottom, taking pictures along the way with Chinese tourists that all want pictures with actual white people. Li Feng hired two men to carry her and Evan back to the top. I go to the gym regularly, but although I go 5 or 6 times in a week but I haven't had that tough a workout in the last year. Hopefully this altitude and exercise will make Lhasa easier when we get there.

One we're dropped off in Li Jiang it's 6:30 and the adults are hungry so we go to a restaurant called The Vulcan with staff in native dress outside dancing around a fire in a large metal container. Li Feng orders noodles, plain buns, cucumber salary my request because Joshua loved it at lunch), Salmon sashimi (also at our request because Ari and Zachary loved it at the previous night's dinner, but the best part was the two mushroom dishes she ordered. Apparently Yunnan province is the best place to get mushrooms in China and they were this restaurants specialty. Li Feng thought it was an expensive meal because of the mushrooms but dinner for 8 cost 260 RMB (about 39 US dollars).

The streets were really crowded on the way back to the hotel. We ended or way through the crowd, buying street food

The old city, Mu's mansion, and Li Jiang Tower

I was pleased that as far as I could tell we attracted no insects overnight. I also felt better when our proprietor and his assistant couldn't find the switch either. Finally they asked the woman who cleaned the rooms and she showed us the switch at the back of a closet in the adjacent room.

We went out for breakfast. The kids wanted American food and found a place with pancakes eggs, bacon, and waffles I left them there and went to a traditional Chinese buffet place with Li Feng, Lina, and Evan. For 10RMB we got hard boiled eggs, both plain and salted, picked radish in a spicy sauce, seaweed salad, cucumber and tofu salad, plain buns, picked cabbage buns, and deep fried dough to dip in soy milk with sugar. Everyone was happy with their breakfast.

We headed off through the old city to Mu's mansion, an ancient complex where the Naxi ruling family lived and worked for centuries. It was now a museum, with beautifully restored buildings and original furnishings and decoration. After wandering the museum, admiring the architecture, gardens, and pools for a couple of hours we had up to the top of Lion mountain to climb to the top of Li Jiang Tower, a 33 meter structure with 10,000 carved dragons on five floors. Lion Mountain is the highest point in the city so we had a spectacular view from the top.

After the tower we headed back to the hotel for a break. I tried to nap and failed. Joshua and I got into an argument. It's obit our 15,789,541st but who's counting. Only one of the three kids acknowledged father's day and between that, the argument, some misbehavior, and Ari lecturing me that I was a jerk for expecting reasonable behavior my kids stole the joy from my day.

We went back out and walked old town. I tried scallion pancakes, tofu, yak meat, and yak milk cheese since we had skipped lunch. Then we went to dinner at a traditional restaurant. The food was OK but we ordered a few dishes that nobody liked much. There was a wild vegetable soup that saunas from a single leafy green and a touch and mushroom dish with soft touch that I didn't like and was too spicy for Andrea. The kids wouldn't try it because it had tofu.

I took a melatonin but had a wakeful period around 5 anyway.

Guangzhou to Li Jiang

Day 4
We went to breakfast near our hotel and had fantastic food again. Fried potato with mustard and wasabi, red bean cake, shrimp dumplings, sweet peanut buns, millet porridge with pumpkin red bean buns.

The service was slow and Andrea and I had a rare moment of disagreement over whether to complain. I was upset about how much she let the irritating inefficiencies bother her and how much she voiced it and I let her know. I didn't want Li Feng to feel that we were unhappy. That was our 5th argument in 32 years but who's counting?

We then went to see the sights. The kids frolicked in a park, dancing with a group of women and playing Chinese hacky sack. We saw statues and canals with long boats and an ancient mansion.

We headed back to the hotel,  packed up and checked out. Yan picked us up and drove is to the airport. We ate lunch at Starbucks in the terminal,  chicken on a salad with baby corn; definitely not on the US menu, and had fresh lychee for dessert. The TSA should take lessons from the Chinese.  Not only was it 20 times faster, they caught the scissors that Zachary had in his pencil case which the TSA completely missed.

The plane was delayed for an hour which gave me some time to catch up on writing this and to read more of my current book,  Lab Girl,  which is interesting and relaxing to read.

I could tell that Li Jiang would be much different from the air. It's at an elevation of 7,500 feet and the terrain is mountainous.  We piled into a couple of old minivans that took us to the old city. It is a maze of narrow old cobblestone streets lined with small shops selling traditional foods and crafts. Cars can't drive in old Town.  We're staying in the middle, so we got out of the vans and hoofed it for a solid 15 minutes to get to the place.

Our hotel was described as a family hotel,  which I didn't really understand until we got there and saw it.  There is a central courtyard surround by the bedrooms, each with an attached bath and an upper level with a large living room and bedroom suite. Andrea and I got the suite. Li Feng's sister Lina meet us there with her 2 year old son, Evan. Lina is 29 and works on construction budgets.
The hotel's courtyard had a few mosquitos and the kids were freaked.  The buildings construction was thrown together. Sliding doors didn't really slide, there were no screens, when they needed to plumb a pipe from the hot water heater to a sink or shower they ran it through an open window, ensuring that it would never close all the way again.

We settled in and walked to dinner at an outdoor barbecue place where we ordered plate after plate of grilled vegetables, shrimp, and fish.  Grilling is a specialty of the Naxi minority that is indigenous to the region and it was beyond delicious.

We walked back to the hotel to howls of protest about the lack of dessert, but managed to find a slice of chocolate cake to sooth the savage beasts. When it was time for bed neither Andrea nor I could find the switch to turn off one of the living room lights.  Between the earlier insect sightings, the unscreened windows that wouldn't close and the light that we couldn't shut off I expected to wake up covered in bites and with a swarm of insects. I went to bed exhausted,  too exhausted to look for the melatonin but I figured it didn't matter because I was so sleepy.  At about 4:30 I regretted that decision.

Guangzhou

Day 3
The morning did not get off to an auspicious start. I had insomnia from about 4. My camera, which had gone missing the previous day was not in the backpack that Andrea assured me it must be in, the VPN on Andrea's computer wouldn't work, and the kindle guide to China that she purchased just wouldn't download.

We got a lat start, after trying to sort all those issues out. Yan sent a friend with her van to pick us up and take us to Fosan for breakfast. We hit major traffic, and between the slow ride, the fact that it would normally be a 40 minute ride, and the late start we didn't start eating until close to noon.

The restaurant was on the second floor of the Crown Plaza hotel, which had a palatial lobby. The restaurant was huge and Yan greeted us at the entrance, standing on the far side of one of three ornamental foot bridges that went across a small pool. She was dressed nicely with a blue silk scarf. At least I wore a Polo shirt.

The restaurant was immense with food peripheral area on the sides that Joshua and Andrea toured and the food kept coming. Noodles, bitter melon sesame coated balls, red bean cakes, millet cakes, dumplings, spicy chicken, fish heads, taro squares, peanut steamed buns, peanut in squares of rice with water chestnuts, congee, mushrooms, noodles made from green beans, are ones I remember as I write this. We left stuffed and happy.

We went to the Ancestral Temple where we saw bronze work, canons, statues, and exhibits on local history. The buildings were interesting with traditional architecture and intricate ceramic friezes and statuary.

It was hot, really hot. We sweated as we walked around a small village of shops with traditional crafts after the temple and decided to head back to the hotel. Once we got there I downloaded Andrea's guide to China and collapsed while she and Li Feng toured the neighborhood that housed the world's largest collection of traditional Chinese medicine stores.

I was woken for dinner and dragged through it in my sleepy state.  It was delicious as usual. Ari got angel hair pasta with salmon roe. I stuck with shrimp in butter and garlic. Andrea had seafood curry in a stone hot pot. Li Feng order a set with vegetables and chicken and egg over rice.  Joshua had a Hawaiian fresh fruit pizza that was sweet and had pineapple and peach drizzled with a sweet cream cheese in addition to mozzarella. When it came he refused to try it until Ari had a slice and declared it OK.

We were supposed to go on a river cruise but we were all exhausted and it was putting rain so we returned to the hotel. I was asleep by 9 and slept until 6. I've never felt better.

Hong Kong to Guangzhou

Day 2
We went to a traditional Chinese place for breakfast. I had a fish cake and fish ball soup with noodles. It was delicious.

Then we went to the top of Victoria Hill on the tram. An impressive mountain climb that made the buildings look like they leaned because the angle was so steep.

We took a quick tour of Hong Kong on a double decker bus. Then went to the train station to get the train to Guangzhou.  Joshua complained bitterly about the lack of time in Hong Kong. We ate in the train's dining car.  A vegetable dish, that was mostly celery, carrots, and mushroom,  beef with carrot in a spicy sauce, and chicken. We were all stuffed by the end of the meal but Joshua ate some Japanese snacks he'd bought in the station; Japanese salad flavored pretzels.

Once in Guangzhou we cleared immigration and were meet by Li  Feng's friend Yan. The seven of us piled into her van and headed to dinner.  Guangzhou is freaky impressive with modern buildings and cool lights everywhere.  The population is about 6 million.  Traffic was horrific.

We arrived at a restaurant named Sky No 1, were let in to a private parking lot, were greeted warmly by a hosts who rode the elevator up to the restaurant on the 28th floor with us where we found ourselves in a huge room with white tablecloths and fancy place settings. In our t-shirts we were definitely undressed. Yan spoke to the waitress in Chinese and we soon turned around, Yan explained that it was not fancy enough, which I took to be humor.  We were guided back onto the elevator for the journey up a floor to the private rooms.

I've been to some fancy restaurants in my life but nothing like this.  I'll try to do it justice. The room was about 20 feet wide and 40 long. Half was a set of comfortable chairs with side tables and the other half held a long table set for six. The decor included a huge modern chandelier, oil paintings, a wall with contoured golden mirror tiles,  and two walls of windows that overlooked the river and the city. The view included the Canton tower,  the tallest structure in China. We were blown away. I was handed a tea menu,  20 pages of tea with descriptions in Chinese and English and asked to choose.  I plead ignorance. Yan ordered chrysanthemum tea and oolong. As we drank one waitress refilled our cups and another brought menus.  The was a seafood menu, a seasonal menu, a regular menu,  a specialties menu, and more.  We let Yan order for us all.

She ordered stir fried vegetables with pepper, at Joshua's request, beef, a pumpkin and taro stew, squid ink noodles, soup, tapioca with honeydew, date jellies, pumpkin custard in flaky pastry.  Between us we managed to eat half of it.

During the meal Zachary spoke to the waitress in Chinese. I asked what he said to her and he told me that he had asked for a glass of cold water and explained that the tea too hot for him. I was really impressed.

Once we finished and took pictures we went to the Guangzhou Opera house to see a traditional Chinese musical. The opera house was huge and architecturally fascinating.  Joshua thought that it looked like the work of Zaha Hadid but I thought it looked too flowing and organic for that.  Our hosts said that they thought Joshua was right.  The performance started with loud drums and acrobats.  The actors danced and sang. The audience was unruly and they down them out with sound. Nevertheless, jet lag overtook me and I found myself fighting to stay awake.

We checked in to the hotel. I love a firm bed.  In fact I often sleep on the floor of I'm tossing and turning to make sure that I don't wake Andrea,  if Andrea is making too much noise in her sleep or tossing too much, if Zachary is having nightmares and wants a parent to sleep next to his bed. This is the firmest I have ever had; a quilt over a wooden box.  I wish I could get one in the US. I passed out around 11. At four I woke up and lay in bed until around six when I got up and wrote this entry.

Hong Kong

Day 1

We insisted on leaving for the airport early at 7AM, to Andrea's intense dismay. Between trouble loading the car (despite having an SUV, there was not enouh space for all of us and the luggage so Zachary sat in Joshua's lap all the way to Metro), construction, and a traffic jam from an accident we needed all the time we had.

Our flight to Chicago was uneventful. The flight to Hong Kong was long; 15 hours with a crying baby much of the time. Joshua complained and we pointed out that he was sometimes none too considerate of those around him. He wasn't buying it.
Our friend Li Feng's flight from Beijing arrived near the same time that ours did and she met us at baggage claim. It is really good to have friends.

We checked into the hotel and it was beautiful. Hong Kong was hot and humid but the lobby was like a walk in refrigerator with marble, a huge modern chandelier, elegant furniture, and a helpful concierge. Our room overlooked the harbor.

We got settled and went to dinner. We walked about 10 blocks to a nice Malaysian restaurant. Nasi Goreng, Roti Canai, Gato Gado. We were in heaven.

After dinner we walked to the harbor and looked at the stunning skyline. I made a a conscious decision not to  bring my camera, just packing a point and shoot, because the family gets upset when I dawdle to set up a shot and this vacation is about family not about my photography, but I regretted the decision when I had no tripod, a low performance camera, and a really great scene.

Back in the hotel, I took some Melatonin and we went to sleep early, since we'd only managed a few hours of sleep in the last 30 hours. I woke at 2am with a horrible pain in my leg. I limped to the batthrooom, went back to sleep, and woke again at 4 at which point Andrea gave me 2 ibuprofen. I was worried about the next day, but by morning the pain was just a bit of stiffnes.

Before departure

As parents, Andrea and I insist that each of our children learn a foreign language. In 2009, when Joshua and Ari were learning Japanese we took them to Japan for two weeks. Zachary went to Tennessee with his nanny because at 4 years old he wouldn't remember anything from the trip and traveling with a four year old is a hard. He asked about being left out. I explained that he wasn't studying Japanese and he asked if I'd take him to China. "Sure, if you're still studying Chinese between 5th and 6th grade we'll go to China."  This is that trip.

Andrea planned much of the trip with our friend Donna. We're trying to see much of the country in under a month. It is insane.

We spent the weekend packing, telling the credit card companies that we'd be in China, and other fun stuff.  On Sunday night or friends Gabor and Zsuzsana came over for coffee and Gabor volunteered to drive is to the airport.

While they were there Lori stopped by.  She and her boyfriend model for me and they are a really cute couple.  I was really sad to find that they were separated and asked too many personal questions when she modeled for me on Thursday. I have this picture in my mind off them as a perfect couple; they remind me of Andrea and me at their age. I don't really know them that well, so it is probably all in my head. I dispensed advice designed to help them get back together and when I found out that she was couch surfing I offered to let her stay at our house while we were gone. I took forever to show her around, although I don't know how it took so long. I still managed to leave out enough to fill a two page note.