Adventures in Beijing

After returning from our tour of the wall we had some actual free time for the first time in our trip (not counting being on the boat for long stretches) and so a bunch of us decided it would be a good idea to go find something to eat. A lot of people would up getting McDonalds since there was one near our hotel, but I'm rarely in the mood for a quarter pounder with cheese, even when I'm at home, so I decided to try my luck and buy whatever other food I could find, first I stopped at a little bakery, and bought a jar of cookies, which weren't very good, then I wandered down the street a little farther and found a place that was selling little pieces of food on sticks which were being boiled in some sort of sauce. I picked up a few random ones, and I have no idea what I ate, all I can say about the experience is that the thing that looked like a few slices of hot dog, definitely was not. After that I stopped into the Jazz club right next to our hotel, The Hot Cat, because there was a live band playing. I have to say hearing a Chinese cover of Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry was a unique experience.

The next morning our whole group set off to the forbidden city. The sheer size of the place is amazing, it really is the size of a small city, and I don't really understand how it could have been built to accommodate one person, it's mind boggling.

Photos and Sketch at the Forbidden City

After seeing the Garden's behind the City I set off with Rob, Kat, and Sean towards Tienanmen square, On the way there we met a woman who had art on display at a gallery across the street from us so we followed her and had a look around,the artwork in that gallery was amazing, and after shopping there for a while I left with two ink paintings.

Not the Paintings I bought, definitely the best in the gallery

After that we stopped for lunch before heading into the square, it was pretty funny to try and order a full meal without someone to translate.

Tienanmen square, while pretty cool, is basically just a big square with a few monuments in it, and some cool buildings around it. It didn't really have the grandness of the forbidden city, but it was definitely cool to walk through.

Sketch and Photos from Tienanmen square

After that we headed into Pearl Market, the Largest marketplace in Beijing. It was very fun to wander around and be able to haggle the prices on pretty much anything.

Sketch and Photos from Pearl Market

The next day was our last in China, but our cabs to the airport didn't leave until almost noon, so after a quick Chinese-style breakfast burrito thing Eric, Abbie, and Myself decided to go take a look at the Golden Lama Temple which was very beautiful, and a great way to end our trip, in my opinion.

Outside of the Temple

Petting the turtle for good luck

Wuhan to Beijing, and The Great Wild Wall

Eventually Thursday morning rolled around and it was time to end out river tour, which luckily ended the hour loop of Kenny G. songs that had been playing since we got on the boat. We hopped a bus from the docks back into Wuhan, but we still had a few hours to kill before our flight to Beijing that night, so we spent our time wandering around the old European portion of the city

A statue In Wuhan

and saying goodbye to our awesome tour guide Linda who had been with us since our first full day in Wuhan. And Thanking Steve Wilmarth again for finding us a new hotel after the communist party commandeered our rooms in Beijing.

Saying Goodbye to Linda and Steve

The part of Wuhan we were in mostly consisted of very high-end stores, there had to have been like five or so Nike outlets and a whole bunch of Addidas stores and all kinds of fancy clothing stores and such where ever thing was just as expensive as it would be back home, so I mostly spent my time here wandering around not buying anything while trying to avoid the sketchy hawkers trying to sell fake Rolexes and stolen shirts.

That night we caught a flight to Beijing and after a frantic hop on the 24 hour train that only runs until 11 pm and a crazy cab ride we got to our hotel, a small little place tucked away in a hutong, a kind of courtyard neighborhood right by the Golden Lama Temple, one of the largest Buddhist temples in the city.

We got up early the next morning and got on a bus where we met William Lindesay, A man who was One of the first people to walk the entire length of the Great Wall of China. And that afternoon he was going to show us A part of the wall not many people get to see.

William Giving us a brief lesson about the wall

After a long, steep, somewhat icy hike a mountain we reached what William calls the Wild Wall, an unrestored section of the wall that is extremely beautiful to behold.

Pictures and Sketch from the wall

It was still fairly cool up in the mountains of Inner Mongolia so After admiring the beauty of the wall the hike back down to William's Cabin was very icy and I managed to fall quite a lot, but the tough journey back was well rewarded with plates on plates of delicious dumplings and tea.

Some Geese I saw near William's Cabin. They were not happy

Hubei Province by Boat

Monday night was out last night in Wuhan City, and we ended it with sparklers and flying wish lanterns on the shore of the Yangtze river

A Wish Lantern over the River

The next morning, after After Breakfast

Alex attempting to chug one last yogurt drink

and some crazy Wuhan traffic jams it was time to say goodbye to our new friends and we were off on the road to the Three Gorges Dams, but before disembarking on our cruise up the river we stopped at a restaurant carved into the side of a cliff.

Next on the itinerary was a hike up the same cliff and through some woods to a really cool series of caves up at the top, though poorly lit in most parts the rock formations inside the caves looked awesome

A Buddha Statue that was in the caves

after hiking back down, we saw some sturgeons,

My rendition of a sturgeon

bridge from beneath

and took a mini boat tour of the area we were in which was pretty cool. To get down to see the sturgeons and get on the little tour boats we had to walk down the first of many seriously impressive flights of stairs on the trip. It was quite an effort to get back to the top, to say the least.

Finally it was time to board the cruise ship where we'd be staying for the few nights. Unknowingly our boat passed through the Three Gorges Dam sometime between 3am and 4am that first night so we didn't get to see them at all, but despite that between the card games and scrabble and music on deck in the evenings and our excursions during the day the cruise was overall very pleasant.

Some sketches I made while on the boat

Our first outing while on the boat was a cruise up one of the tributaries in small wooden boats called Pea Pod boats, which was cool, the guide on the boat even sang us a traditional Tu Jia (The name of the people who live in the area) song. Along the way we also saw some monkeys on the shore and a crevice high up in a cliff with some coffins hanging in it.

Hanging coffins

The second trip off the boat was to a place called the white emperor city, which happened to contain another epic flight of stairs, the temple at the top was really cool, and totally worth the climb, with all it's awesome statuary, great view, and even a few stair climbing donkeys.

Burlington to Wuhan

My recent journey to China was utterly amazing. I'm still finding it difficult to put the experience into words, because the whole journey was a torrent of new experiences, and isn't life more about what you experience on a journey than where it takes you anyway? And I'll be the first to say this was one hell of an interesting journey.

Take for example, the very beginning of the trip. This was the first time I've been on an airplane since I was around 12 years old; My first time ever leaving the US. And I can tell you that planes are much less exciting now than when I was a little kid. And after our, two hour hangout at the Burlington airport, two hour flight to the great state of New Jersey, Four hour layover there, 16 hour flight to Beijing, and another two hour flight to Wuhan, I had had my fill of airplanes and airports for a while and I was ready to explore China.

The Newark Airport

My stay in Wuhan was awesome, the first night we stayed in a hotel downtown and I have to say that Even though that night it was too late to see most of the buildings in their neon-coated glory it was definitely a sight to see. Although after hours on a plane, and a bus, and an hour or so of exploring the city on foot, I can't say my first experience with a Chinese bed was a comforting one; most mattresses in China seem like they're made of bricks.

The lobby of our hotel in Wuhan

The next day we got some awesome food on Breakfast street in Wuhan; Hot-Dry Noodles are pretty good if you like soy sauce and peanuts; On s side note, later in my stay in Wuhan I did eat a fish eyeball it didn't taste foul or anything, just a bit like weirdly hard wet chalk. A quick sketch of some fish eyeball

After our breakfast we went to a beautiful Buddhist temple where we received fortune cards with a specific Buddha on it, mine happened to be strangling a dragon, which is pretty cool.

My interpretation of Buddha Laying the smackdown on a dragon

Giant statue behind the temple

After that I visited a park, and a Museum, which were really cook, the park especially since it was liberally sprinkled with some really epic statues.

A really awesome statue from the park, which I decided to quickly sketch

After that one of our major trip coordinators' Steve Wilmarth Introduced us to some of his students who would be our hosts for the next two nights, Noctis, whose home we would be staying at, and his friend Eric who would be staying too in order to meet my buddy Alex and myself. After settling in at Noctis's home, having a wonderful meal, watching a few minutes of Chinese soap operas on TV and seeing some intense Mahjong being played,

A sketch of one of the numerous crystal chandeliers in Noctis' home

Noctis' Father invited us to tour Wuhan Yiheng Heavy Industries Co. the giant steel factory which he owned the next morning, which was really cool to see, the factory was pretty much like any factory you'd see in the US, except that it had 2000 workers on duty per shift. We were told that the factory operates 24-7 and most of the workers live in dormitories on-site, a bus was required to tour the whole facility. It was really eyeopening to see the the economic powerhouse behind China so up close. In fact I'd have to say the entire journey In Wuhan was eyeopening.

Eric, me, Noctis, Alex, Noctis' Father, and Noctis' Mother in front of a big machine

My Multimedia Blogging Project

Ok, so as part of the China Mojo class we're going to be doing a multimedia project on out personal blogs during, and after our trip to China next week. I was thinking about what I wanted to do for this project, and I decided that I wanted to keep it simple, and the first thought that came to mind was keeping a photographic record of the trip, which is cool and I'll definitely be taking lots of pictures but I didn't just want to do that, I feel like it doesn't suit me that well, especially since I'm no great, spectacular photographer.

Then I realized, that since I wanted to do something like a photo journal, and I was going to be bringing my sketchbook with me like I always do,

Here's an example of one of my sketches

(this, and some of my other work is up here)

that I could still do basically the same thing, but with drawings instead of just pictures. What I'm going to be doing for this project is making a series of sketches in a brand new sketchbook

there is nothing quite like a completely blank sketchbook

(photo by me)

just for this trip, and I'll be uploading them to this blog so everyone can see them. I really want to do a drawing on every sheet in this sketchbook (it has 80 sheets) but doing 80 drawings during my ten days running around China is a little unrealistic, so I'll also be doing some of these drawings from photographs I've taken when I return. I feel like it would be cool to show the photo and the drawing side by side in this case, so that's also something I'll be doing on this blog.

What do I know about China? Honestly, not a whole lot. I don't consistently read or watch the news, so my knowledge of this country is pretty lax. I would guess any knowledge I have about this place is from movies, history channel specials, a few episodes of Bizarre Foods on the travel channel, the very occasional news article, and maybe a little from some video games (Fallout 3 is a reliable source of information right?).

Pictured above: Reliable source of information

(Image from thewebtechreviews.com)

As I've said already, what knowledge I have of China is pretty basic, I can find it on a map, I know Mandarin is the official language there, but there are a bunch of others, Kung Fu originated there, Budhissim is a major religion, and their money looks really weird .

Way too colorful and flowery for my tastes, but the scenery on the backs are really cool

(Image from: me)

I've also heard that Chinese food in china, is much different than Chinese food in America, which is good for when I visit, because while I will eat or drink almost anything once, I can't quite stomach Most Chinese food here.

The one thing that makes all Chinese food tolerable

(Picture from: asianfoodgrocer.com)

Some of my other impressions of China come from conversations. During the Summer I work at Boston University, and many of the Professors and graduate students that I work for are Chinese. They are all really nice people, and talking to them doesn't do anything to disprove the stereotype that Asian people are extremely smart in my opinion.

I really would like to know more about china, their weird mix of being strict, totalitarian communist government while also being a capitalist industrial labor hub baffles me somewhat, and I'd like to know more about how that works (it was cool to read over the summer about Chinese factory workers attempting, and having some small success at unionizing, I don't remember where I read it unfortunately) and I'd also like to know more about their ancient, and modern architecture, I've heard that there are a lot of really cool building projects going on in China now and I would love to learn about that.

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

So This is my blog for Champlain College's 2011 China Mojo course. Here I'll be posting things I learn in class about China, and I'll also be documenting my trip to China in March. This is my take on the course, but the course has it's own blog located here, if you wanted to check that out.
Anyway, for our first assignment we were asked to answer some questions about ourselves:
1. Where are you from? State or province, and town?
2. Describe a fun media experience you had during your holiday vacation.
3. Describe one thing you LIKE about our 21st century media culture, and one thing you DON'T LIKE about our 21st century media culture.
4. What vision do you have for your future, professionally?
5. What is one QUestion you have about China?
And my answers were:
1. Dedham, MA
2. I confused my parents by talking to my friends while playing Xbox.
3. I like the availability of information, but I don't like needing to feel available to everyone all the time.
4. I want to work basically any video game studio.

5. How often, if at all do people in China eat animals we consider pets, like dogs.

Here is a picture of my dog, who I don't plan on eating

As a special treat, here's a video of my favorite band playing at a concert in China: