Molehills out of Mountains

The day began in Beijing, with a clear blue sky defying the usual forecast of cloudy with a bit of haze.  Our hotel is even more amazing than the previous ones: queen beds to ourselves, a huge gym, put put golf, and a karaoke club in the basement.  Given that I will be roughing it (relatively) for the month after this trip, I'm trying to soak up this luxury and enjoy it while I still have someone else to plan and pay for my trips.

Our first adventure was to a high school for migrant workers' children at a high school called Beijing BN Vocational School. Is the first tuition-free charity secondary school in China, and its initial branch was the school that we visited in Beijing.  The need for the school is huge: more and more people are moving from the countryside to the cities to find better opportunities, but due to their low education levels there are no jobs for them.  Their children are either left behind with grandparents (often alone, due to the One Child Policy) for years without seeing their parents.  There are 58 million of these workers' children under 14, most of whom end up as middle school drop-outs.  And that's just the legal children.  Illegal second children are often left outside hospitals because the parents don't want to pay the huge fees to make them legal.  Illegal children can't go to school or get identification.  They can't go on airplanes or have jobs that require documentation.  But paying the penalty to legalize children is often prohibitively expensive.  It was 6,000 yuan when a government salary was 100 yuan a month.  It's a system with a lot of problems.

This high school, founded in 2005, takes in children (I assume only legal ones, though) who can't afford normal high school fees and who hope to gain vocational training and fulfill the dreams with which their parents arrived in Beijing. The students take classes in air conditioning, plumbing, English, ancient Chinese culture, embroidery, pastry-making, electrical wiring, waitressing, computer skills, gardening, plumbing, and numerous other subjects.  Different companies seem to sponsor various facilities, like a recent computer lab given by Motorola.  It was a really nice school and the students all seemed incredibly engaged and grateful to be there.  So where does a random American choir come into the picture?  Well, it turns out the school has an extracurricular singing group, too.  And the school believes that music builds character and aids learning, which is pretty nifty.  The choir performed two songs for us, one in English (called "Proud of You") and the other in Chinese.  Pretty adorable.  

Then we sang a few songs to show the range of our repertoire, ending with Fengyang Song (a huge crowd pleaser here, though it is a simple children's song).  We then broke into groups to practice Little Innocent Lamb, which we had been told they had learned.  It was rough.  Nobody in our group really spoke Chinese and the girls did not seem to know the song at all.  But we persevered and I think they had a good time.  The contrast between these shy girls and the boisterous high school class that we worked with a few days ago was striking.  Both sets of students were lovely and engaged, though, so we had a good time.

After outreach, we were dropped at a mall to fend for ourselves and get lunch.  We were told to go to the fifth floor food court, but one of our girls is from Beijing and led us to another food court on the third floor that had a range of interesting offerings.  

I tried a shredded chicken sandwich spiced with deliciousness and served on the Chinese version of an English muffin, donkey meat, dumplings, peppercorns that are a Sichuan delicacy and numb your mouth instead of setting it on fire, duck blood tofu, sour plum juice, and a variety of other offerings.  Eating in groups is one of the best parts of traveling in groups.  Meals are an opportunity for spontaneous tapas-like portioning of each dish.  The food adventures continue!

We also had our first rehearsal with the choir and orchestra from the Central Conservatory of Music, which was interesting. The conductor seems to ignore most of the mistakes that we make and instead forges onward to the end of the piece, then runs it again without fixing anything.  After two runs and a few tiny spot-checks (of not even close to the biggest mistakes), he lets us out of rehearsal early.  This happened both times today.  Sometimes the problem is that he gives instructions in one language and forgets to give them in the other.  Sometimes it's the dearth of pencils to annotate our music and bend Beethoven to his will.  Sometimes it is a difference in how we were rehearsed before being brought together.  But little gets resolved and so the problems persist.  But the conductor is nice, as are the other students.  The soloists are equally confused by our conductor, which makes me feel better about not understanding him, but they sound beautiful.  Things always come together at the last minute, right?

After rehearsal, one other student and I got interviewed for broadcast on the Beijing nightly news.  They were typical sound bites devoid of anything sensational.  They merely wanted to know where we had gone in China, whether I liked the other choir, whether I liked China.  Apparently looking foreign is interesting enough.

And then dinner.  It was delicious and another adventure, but the best part was the conversation.  David proposed a topic of discussion - our five year plans - and it gave us a chance to ask very real questions of each other on topics that would otherwise be difficult to broach.  I learned a lot about people's strengths, failures, and fears.  It contextualized a lot of their decisions.  I loved it.  I went first and was very interesting to see how different my story was from those of other people.  I have found love.  I have a fairly certain next five years.  I have no Plan B.

After dinner, four of us skipped the bus back to the hotel and took on the city.  We walked the perimeter of the Forbidden City, arriving at its back corner just in time to sit on the edge of the moat, admire the sparkling buildings, and watch it all go dark.  We walks alongside parks and through residential areas, peeking through door cracks and sneaking into construction areas.  We experienced real public restrooms (not just squat toilets, but squat toilets with no doors and no real walls) and explored convenience stores.  We at last arrived at a lake rimmed by the heart of Beijing nightlife and pulsing with its bass beat.  On one end, pairs of locals played a game halfway between hackey sack and badminton, involving extreme feats of coordination and hip flexibility.  A weighted tuft of feathers was kicked, bounced, and ricocheted between the partners.  It was mesmerizing.  

I got them to let me play and watched my shoe fly into a bush (almost into a lake) with my first kick.  I ended up playing barefoot until the weighted bottom raised welts on my foot.  Chris was amazing at it, probably thanks to his soccer history.

Eventually we wandered further, past the men with glowing floats on their fishing lines, past bars with live music spilling out the door, past women selling illegally-powerful laser pointers and craftsmen making replicas of people out of clay.  Past amputee beggars and groups of tourists from other parts of China.  Past stalls selling old Communist propaganda and knock-off sneakers.  Past street food stands and bars with Chinese names and bars with names in English.  Past hookah bars and American bros and illegal taxi drivers in dark cars.  All with the lights glittering on the water and the clink of glasses.  It was a three hour tour of Beijing, starting with history and ending with modern glitter and indulgence.  

Finally, we had exhausted ourselves and looked for a taxi.  We haggled, we tried to his our swanky hotel destination, we chased taxis and argued with drivers.  We finally jumped into the back of a cab with a lit sign (lit sign = metered = half the price of the lowest a foreigner will successfully haggle) and we were on our way.  We lucked out: the right price, the right driver, the right soundtrack (Chinese pop), the right company.  We pulled up to our hotel to the beat of a song that must be called "But I'm Still Hot", detailing the horrible things you can do to your friends while still remaining hot, climbed out, and bid goodnight to our latest city.

Here's to a day when the impossible seemed possible, and people could overcome anything.

Spotted: Things that are not as they esteem.  Apparently that karaoke bar in our hotel basement that I was so excited about may actually be a cover for a brothel.  Such was the discovery of two Glee Club men who went down to investigate the possibility of a Glee karaoke bonanza in coming days.  Females who went to ask were told that the elevators don't run to the basement.  A search of TripAdvisor by one Glee Clubber apparently revealed similar revelations published by somewhat horrified former guests.  Well, that was unexpected.

Perspective from Porters

The series of unfortunate events continues; where is Lemony Snicket when you need him?  We started the morning with a power outage and more people down with fevers.  But the rest of us were too excited by the day's promise to let such trifles dampen our enthusiasm.  Today was our grown-up field trip to the Yellow Mountain, the most beautiful in China.

The Yellow Mountain used to be called the Black Mountain about 2,000 years ago (all stories in China have magnitudes of years on those in America) because the water flowing over the rocks stained the cliff faces dark.  During the stand dynasty, though, the name was change to honor the Yellow Emperor, the father of China.  He bathed in the hot springs and ascended to heaven, not to die but to enjoy the eternal youth he had obtained from the springs.  Today, the mountain boasts rocky outcroppings with fantastical names like "Begin to Believe Peak" and "Grand Canyon of the Western Sea".  It also possesses the Five Wonders, pine trees (the type on the mountain "stretches its branches as though welcoming guests", rocks, a sea of clouds (after the rain), hot springs (those of the bathing Yellow Emperor), and snow.  With this scene set by our guides, we began to ascend the mountain on our buses.  We passed through a dense bamboo forest as we wound our way up the hill.  We reached a cable car station that transported us 8 at a time in swaying gondolas up at least another thousand feet.  From there, we hiked along the massive range, looking down through the beautiful valleys created by the curving rows of mountains. Perhaps most surprisingly, there was very little rock to be seen. To add to the many colors assigned to these mountains, they were a lush, full green.  Well-watered and enjoying the full warmth of the sun, the browns and grays of the underlying ground were masked by the competing greenery.  Trees sprung up from cracks in the rock, tiny flat spaces, even seemingly from the uninterrupted rock faces.  Hiking was wonderful.  The paths were paved to ensure steady footholds, the sun was shining, and the temperature hung between 60 and 70 degrees. A perfect day for scaling a mountain.

We hiked for about an hour and ended up at a luxury hotel atop one of the mountains.  It looked directly into a long crevice flanked by mountains, and watching the rock faces fall off into oblivion was either awe- or vertigo-inducing, depending on the person.  While I felt guilty for eating at a hotel supplied by the porters (men or occasionally women who are paid to carry literally every supply three hours up the mountain to the hotel) who we had seen struggling along the mountain, it was the only option and the food was delicious.  There was nearly a riot over the sweet and sour pork, which was a huge relief to the Glee Clubbers who were just craving some American favorites or, at the very least, something familiar and not too adventurous.

In the words of one of our Glee Club songs, "A porter's life is hard".

We had a second leg of our hike after lunch, this time on a more challenging section of trail that included steeper rises and falls and closer brushes with the cliff edge.  It was beautiful, but provided similar views to the previous section.  Still, it was wonderful to walk through the park and soak up the beauty around us.

As afternoon settled into evening, we wandered on Old Street in downtown Xiuning. A traditional marketplace that had been mostly overrun by tourism but boasted a few stalwarts, it reminded me a lot of Las Ramblas in Barcelona.  Except without the semi-themed blocks, the Catalan street signs, or the length.  Old Street (perhaps it has a different name, but that is how our guides referred to it) has shops selling both kitschy and traditional foods, crafts, and souvenir.  On a single block, you can buy a traditional gelatinous rice treat (like unflavored, unsweetened mochi), a Chinese ink stone the size of a car, and a series of cheap fans with hastily painted designs.  You can sit down and sample various teas, from black teas full of body to slightly grassy green teas (Maofung is highly regarded but I didn't particularly like it) to famous chrysanthemum teas.  A group of us tried them all, and many people swore it was the most effective sales technique they had seen in China.  My two favorite stores were a postcard store that sold postcards and journals and had its walls covered with postcards bearing handwritten notes.  The journals had particularly interesting designs, from an Obama journal that said "Serve the People" and had him wearing a Soviet Communist outfit to a series of journals for people born in various decades that were oddly telling (see the second row of books in the photo).

My other favorite store was the apothecary.  Unlike the other stores, it was a sleek dark cave of 150-year old wood paneling.  

It didn't seemed to have changed much in all that time, as the walls were still lined with old glass jars of coiled snakes and spindly roots or shelf upon shelf of mounted rocks with plaques boasting their health or protective benefits.  Each room hid another at its back, and I wove my way through the entire depth of the block.  It was wonderful and fascinating.  I felt like I needed a guide.

Dinner was a fun affair of sampling.  One highlight was the shizitou, or lion's head, which are giant (GIANT) meatballs and which I had learned about in Chinese class.  It's funny what the mind hangs on to years later.  There was also a sort of baklava-looking dish using tofu skin wrappers that had an odd chewy consistency.  The majority of the other dishes were similar to those that we had tried before.

To end the day, we schlepped to the airport for our flight to Beijing.  It had been a long day with and early start, and it would have a late end.  Though we had been assured that as a small airport, Xiuning Airport did not require an early arrival, they were ill-equipped to handle the arrival of 80 people.  The computers dated from at least the 1990s.  Security was a single grumbling machine that was barely manned (and though they searched my bag, it was not my test tubes filled with shampoo or my dried American fruit that caused concern but my perfectly-sized contact solution tucked away in my sealed quart bag).  The concession stand past security sold unground coffee beans and little else.  We ended up putting all the bags under 2 people's names and still the inefficiency delayed the flight.  But I slept the whole journey and we landed in Beijing without issue.

Spotted: I am not well-built for a life without washing machines, it seems.  Though I successfully laundered my dirty clothes in the sink upon arrival in Beijing, I scrubbed hard enough to leave blisters on my fingers.  But at least I smell okay.

Right Here in River City

Yeah we got trouble, right here in River City.  With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool.  - The Music Man (context provided below)

We started the morning with more trouble.  A singer down with appendicitis, the child of a chaperone ill, and two of our group leaders heading to Beijing to fix the Passport Problem.  And yet we persevere, living by our perennial tour motto of "Be the first one to help out and the last one to complain".

The day began with (guess what?) another bus ride, this one 7 hours long.  We passed through suburbia for several hours before reaching the Huizhou province.  Lush greenery provided a backdrop for row upon row of mountains that faded from green to gray and from clear to hazy.  The mountains had a slightly peculiar shape where the top became quite steep and pointed.

Beneath the mountains spread out small clusters of houses alongside the highway, squares surrounding little communal plots. In most of the villages, there were solar water heaters on the roofs, which I found quite interesting.  We also passed a field full of solar panels.  China may have horrible pollution, but it does seem to be trying.  Out here in the country the air is also significantly clearer, both visibly and as reported by my relieved lungs.  Along the drive I also noticed that all of the trees are very spindly.  For the bamboo ones, it is to be expects, but there were literally no trees that looked old.  As David said, "Mao was not a fan of trees."  Maybe that had something to do with it?  Dotting the hills and mountains surrounding us were fairly elaborate stone graves and crypts built into the hillside, right alongside the stripes of terraced farming.

We stopped for lunch quite late and near our final destination, so we had a chance to try local cuisine (according to one of the Chinese girls on the trip whose father is from this region).  There was a lot of seafood, which had been notably absent from our diet here in China.  The first two bowls to arrive were a bowl of mousse-like eggs flavored with seaweed with tiny translucent shrimp on top, noticeable only because of their twin black pinprick eyes.  The other was a plate full of slightly larger shrimp (about an inch and a half long and pink-colored this time) boasting one long spindly claw.  These were meant to be eaten whole.  As the meal progressed, a variety of other dishes arrived - a flaky white fish, bok choy, wrinkly green beans, three soups (one with bamboo shoots and meat, one with long spaghetti/ramen-like noodles, one clear with pickled vegetables), dried brown string beans (also delicious), and dry tofu with green peppers.

May I say, tofu in China is so much better than tofu in the United States.  But dry tofu in particular is a revelation.  It looks like a mushroom and it's a bit chewy but is probably my favorite new food that I have discovered on this trip.

After lunch, we chugged along for another half hour or so to our hotel, which is built alongside a beautiful lake and forest.  We had a bit of free time to explore, which some friends and I used to walk toward the town.  First we tried to get into the wildlife preserve across the street, but it was $15 (yes, that's the price in USD, not in kuai) and we only had about half an hour.  Instead we walked over a bridge, laughing as cars and bikes slowed down next to us or altogether stopped to ogle the blonde girl, ginger boy, and Latin guy.  We were most popular with the 4-6 age range, but everyone seemed to get a kick out of seeing us.  As expected, the further we get from the major cities, the more incredible we seem.  My celebrity continues to grow.

We spent the late afternoon at a local high school, Xiuzhong High School.

The kids spoke English quite well and were so enthusiastic.  Several Yale-China Fellows were teaching there (2 go each year through the Yale-China Association program and they stay for 2 years), which was fun.  The students adored all of their teachers and the classroom was fairly rowdy from the level of participation.  It was the opposite of my expectation of laced-up, stressed students.  Especially since the college entrance exams are in a few weeks.  You take two days of tests and two weeks later, out pops the name of the college you will attend.  One test and it's all over.  One girl in the Glee Club, who is from Beijing, told me how she was not allowed to go to school after she got into Yale because they didn't want her to distract the other students.  They had guards at the door to the school with pictures of all of the students who would be attending college abroad and did not permit them to enter school grounds.  Crazy, right?  But I understand.  They let the seniors at my high school do internships after AP exams have finished so that they aren't disruptive in class.  Anyway, the kids were lovely.

We broke up into groups of about 15 and spread out in different classrooms.  The kids were cheering in the halls as we arrived and they all sat eagerly as we entered.  They clapped after anything anyone said and were all grinning and laughing.  We introduced ourselves and they LOVED that some of their pale visitors spoke a bit of Chinese and had Chinese names.  We sang a few songs for them and then taught them the chorus to "Eli Yale." Then, we let the kids ask us questions.  They wanted to hear us speak Chinese, sing "Bulldog" (they were obsessed after hearing it from of one the Yale-China fellows), and wanted to know how we liked China.  Then one brave boy in the front row who had been trying to flirt with me earlier (very impressive - flirting in a different language is hard!) said that they didn't get many blondes here and asked if I had a boyfriend.  Thank god I could say yes (love you, honey!). Then, as a last question, one of the spunky girls (my total favorite) challenged one of us to a rock-paper-scissors duel with the loser doing 10 push-ups.  Our representative was soundly defeated and the entire class crowded around to count as he did his push-ups.  All in all, it was the most fun I have ever had on an outreach trip.

After dinner (more local cuisine), the Yale-China fellows took a group of us into town.  A square where there is usually dancing at night was empty, probably because it was a Monday night.  There were ping-pong table to one side with an energetic crowd, though, so Alex and I decided to check it out.  We figured that since one of us was blonde and the other was black (power couple of attention-grabbing inChina, am I right?), they might even let us play.  And they did.  We played each other and then took turns playing an old man who we have dubbed The Grand Master.  I think he beat me 30-1, but Alex did a bit better.  It was more hilarious than humiliating how terribly we fared.  We then caught up with the group at a large pagoda with a giant bell inside.  From the deck, we admired the fiery hue of the harvest moon.

On our way back to the hotel, two of the Yale-China fellows, Alex (not the aforementioned one) and Gabe asked if any of us wanted to play pool.  Three of us (Becca, Jenna, and I) went with them to what I figured would be a bar with a pool table.  Nope.  It was a room filled with pool tables, and we got the last free one.  We settled on girls vs. guys since that also balanced the levels of experience on either team, and so it began.  I quickly realized that I have no talent for pool (which I had played maybe once before) and that my only contribution would be a constant stream of trash talk.  I was so bad that I even scoped out the other players in the hall and tried to get one to take a guest shot for me.  He did not understand what I was saying, even with the help of the fellows, so I was left to fail on my own.  Then halfway through the second game I hit one in.  And then hit the black ball in at the end of the game.  Perhaps I have some hidden reserves of pool talent after all, though I doubt that I will ever go to enough bars to hone my skills.  After three games (we won the second one, and kept the third game close), we wandered back to the hotel in the moonlight.  What a great night.

Interesting fact about Huizhou:

One of the towns is famous for making compasses used by fortune tellers.

It is a hub of feng shui masters.

Its opera was well-loved by the emperor and was moved to Beijing to become the current Beijing Opera.

All of the most successful pawn shops in the nation were owned by people originally from the region, and they are famous for it throughout China.

80% of the land is mountains.  Only about 5% can be farmed.

As a result of the lack of arable land, they started other private industries.  A major one was shipping lumber down the river to other major cities (this explains the skinny trees!!!).

This region produces a lot of tea due to the suitable climate.  Our guide claims that one of the top three types of tea internationally is produced here.

The region is home to the famous Yellow Mountain, known as the most beautiful mountain in China and as the subject of numerous Chinese paintings.

Spotted: Interesting Western carry-overs on road signs.  Restaurants at rest stops are indicated using a crossed fork and knife sign, though you will find neither fork nor knife upon your arrival.  Radio stations are indicated as FM.

In a Haze

Finally - FINALLY - I got to start a morning off right.  Marcella and I went on a run through Hangzhou, jogging along the side of a bustling street full of morning commuters.  The only maps that our hotel had were not of the area around the hotel, so we decided to wing it.  We just turned left and ran through the city,  Hundreds of scooters zipped along, every single driver doing a double take at the two scrawny white girls with blonde hair bobbing along with no apparent destination.  About halfway through our run, we looked over and noticed that we were mere meters from the beautiful West Lake.  

We had been running parallel to its shore for most of our run, not suspecting how close we were to its lapping edges.  We turned in and joined the throngs of morning walkers on the pathway, passing groups of brightly-dressed seniors doing tai chi.  Some used swords with long yellow tassels swinging from the handles.  Men with buckets and what initially looked like mops were painting delicate calligraphy on the stone tiles with water.  It was beautiful alongside the lake as the mist rolled over the mountains and a house-like boat glided from port to port.  I love exploring cities on foot in the mornings.

The breakfast buffet at our new hotel rivaled that of the previous one.  There was a wide variety of foods both savory and sweet.  I stuck mostly to savory - homemade yogurt with a slight hint of sourness, wonton soup with scallions and a hint of soy sauce, and a thousand other things.  Breakfast in China has been it's own adventure.

After breakfast, we loaded up the bus for our return to Shanghai but lingered in Hangzhou for - what else? - a boat ride on one of the house-like boats I had admired that morning.  Though the early morning humidity had  produced a mid-morning drizzle, the open back area of the boat was at capacity as we enjoyed the breeze over the water and the unmasked landscapes revealed behind the shifting mists.  Just when you were enchanted by the mysterious hazy mountains, you noticed a beautiful and ornate pagoda previously obscured by the fog.  Sadly, our "tour" involved no guidance and we were left to draw our own conclusions about the sights around us.

While the drive back to Shanghai was fairly uneventful (a blessing on this tour), it did offer opportunities to get to know group members that I don't know well and to sample the offerings of various roadside stops.  We enjoyed green bean ice cream (delicious, but red bean is still my favorite) and dried mulberries (very mixed opinions on this one from the group, but I enjoyed them in small doses), among other snacks.  It's pretty incredible how many things the Chinese shrink-wrap and offer for convenience-store consumption.  Want an egg? There are plenty of varieties all preserved in their plasticky glory in Aisle 3. The same goes for nearly every type of meat, including chicken feet.  

Its such a different conception of highway food.  I feel like it would be fascinating to read the food labels here, if only I knew how.

Lunch was at, oddly, a Walmart complex ringed by fast food restaurants.  While I am hoping to try the fine-dining experience that is Chinese Pizza Hut (joking aside, this is an establishment that sells steaks and is not a fries-and-a-side-combo-dollar-menu type place), this was neither the time nor place.  We only had time to grab takeout (a takana and seaweed noodle bowl, in my case, to obtain which I uses all my Chinese and miming skills) and didn't get to explore the wonder that is China Walmart.  I feel like it would be fascinating.  David and Chris managed to pop in and buy an entire cooked duck (for less than $2), proving (again) that I have chosen the best possible travel companions for my tour extension.

The afternoon and evening were spent, once again, in preparation for and execution of a concert.  It was exhausting and the group grew smaller every time we stepped on stage.  Several people had already been taken to the hotel early to recuperate.  Others lost their voices, and still others simply couldn't function.  I had slept poorly the night before and was struggling, too.  But apparently we sounded good and, though it pained us, we even did an encore.

The other Gleeple (we have a habit of joining words in a cutesy way) gathered for festivities, but many of us instead went off to bed.  It had been a long day, and we're only a third of the way through tour.

Spotted: Traveling with Jewish students observing the Sabbath.  I learned today about the interesting tour modifications made for the students who are observing the Sabbath.  They went to Hangzhou early and had to have someone open the scanning doors for them, among other things.  It's not easy (and rather a hassle for them) but luckily there is enough public transportation to make it work.  It's so interesting, because this has probably been happening on every Glee tour that I have been on but was managed so smoothly that I never noticed.

 

Blondes, Buses, and Buddhas

The three B's (blondes, buses, and Buddhas) are not to be confused with the three forbidden T's (the aforementioned Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen Square), but they perfectly sum up my day yesterday, as I will explain.  But Bs and T's are not the only thing that come in threes.  We also had triplets of trouble, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I overslept in the morning because I didn't realize that my phone was still in a US time zone (when you're exactly 12 hours apart, it's easy to forget to check AM vs PM.  As a result, I missed meeting up with my running buddies, and missed out on morning tai chi in the park across from our hotel.  Major bummer, but I'm sure that I will have other chances.

Breakfast was another adventure, this time exploring congee: a sort of rice porridge that is usually savory rather than sweet.  It comes plain with a variety of add-ons alongside, including fermented tofu (very strong), pickled vegetables, and other toppings that I'd didn't recognize.

It definitely wasn't my favorite.  The congee was bland and the toppings weren't really that tasty in my opinion.  The fermented tofu was overwhelming in contrast with the rather bland pickled vegetables.  It was worth trying but only because I had other things to rinse the taste out of my mouth and fill me to a happy fullness.

We left Shanghai (temporarily) behind and drove to Hangzhou.  Hangzhou is famous for its beauty, I particular along the oft-painted and oft-copied West Lake.  The city is located on the Yangtze River Delta and is one (and has been for 1,000 years) one of the wealthiest parts of China.  Our first order of business was diving straight into the beauty and calm provided by this haven by visiting the Lingyin Temple.  First built in 326 AD, but clearly renovated since, the temple is really a series of temples that grow larger and large as you trek up the mountain.  Let me set the scene: you enter through one of the elaborate gates.  Everywhere you look are packed dirt paths lined by irregular boulders with tops smoothed by centuries of travelers resting upon them.  Across a small stream, lush green tress rocked shad and cliffs rise, revealing carved Buddhas every few steps. Caves appear and people disappear as they explore the mountains' depths.  It's incredibly peaceful.  As the stream wends its way through these mountains, taming their edges into smooth curves, gaggles of women with parasols meander alongside.  Art students apply painstaking layers of gray and black to capture the shading of the trees, capturing tranquility in brush strokes.  Packs of teenage boys lean against trees, people-watching instead of absorbing their surroundings.  I could have spent all day there.

While I loved the paths, I had to visit the famous attraction: the Buddhist temples.  Apparently this is one of the main centers of Buddhism in China, although that's unconfirmed hearsay.  Still, the places was clearly built by a community with incredibly strong faith, judging by the amount of work that went into it and the dedicate worshippers we observed.

Prayer instructions

At the base of the mountain is the main Daxiong Baodian (Great Hall), which contains a gigantic Buddha statue.  It forms one wall of a square of elaborate yellow buildings.  Across the square is a series of statues that apparently represent the four winds of Buddha but without context provided by a tour guide just looked rather angry.  The buildings continued up the hill, each different and often jarring out of context.

When you reach the top of the mountain, just keep climbing. -Buddha

In one of the earlier temples was a back wall so steep and unexpected that you might overlook it if others hasn't stopped and turned.  Its intricacy reminded me of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona - you didn't know where to look.  Golden peaceful Buddhas contrasted with fearsome green monsters, faces twisted in hate and anger. Behind me, people debated whether this represented heaven or hell.  I really couldn't say.

The park was quite busy, which I was told was due to upcoming college entrance exams.  If I was being ranked against every other college-aged student in China, I would need people's prayers, too.

So we've covered buses and Buddhas, but what about blonde? Well, I've been getting more and more attention for my blondeness each day.  Its pretty much a constant photoshoot here.  I got slightly mobbed in the park but people have mostly been respectful.

They had us meet up at KFC, the only truly distinctive landmark to a non-Chinese speaker.  I wasn't hungry, but ordered something small to tide me over to dinner. The food was terrible but the milk tea was fairly yummy.  I hate ordering American food (particularly fast food) outside of the US (or often in it).  Lesson: don't wonder fried food in a country where the amount of URL use is proportional to the amount of respect the person has for you.  I discovered the vegetarians has found a place around the corner selling glutinous rice with red bean paste, wrapped and steamed in leaves.  It was so incredibly delicious.  As I savored each bite, the moment got even better - monks walked by and I got to high-fine them.  Have you high-fived a monk today?

The afternoon was spent doing our second university music exchange.  The university buildings were compared to Starfleet Academy and the Library of Alexandria, to give you a sense of the range and scale of the architecture.  People were dropping like flies due to jet lag, exhaustion, respiratory issues (from smog and incense), sun poisoning and dehydration, and allergies.  The university students that we worked with were quite nice but fewer of them spoke English than at the previous university, which complicated our interactions.

And now let's get back to the trouble.  I already mentioned the exhaustion and the language barrier (which led to confusions not worth discussing here), but I said these things come in threes.  The third and final issue was that two purses went missing from our (supposedly locked but demonstrably otherwise) dressing room.  Wallets, passports, everything gone.  This delayed our return to the hotel and put even more stress on the group.  I feel lucky to have emerged unscathed so far by this bad luck.  Perhaps we need to fix the feng shui of our bus or concert venues or something.

Spotted: wonderfully horribly translated signs.  This one was my favorite (below). Note the symbols to the left that clarify what they're trying to say.

At the Intersection of Chinglish and Haggle

On our first real day of what has been dubbed "No Clothes Glee" Tour (the airline lost 2/3 of the group's luggage), we discovered that the Holiday Inn offers a veritable feast in the mornings.  David and I decided that in order to fully appreciate and immerse ourselves in Asian cuisine, we obviously had to try one of each thing.  And we did.  There were steamed buns filled with veggies or meat, little cups filled with something like a cupcake, Chinese pancakes (delicious crepes filled with hoisin sauce, pickled veggies, and assorted other fillings), omelette, mini pancakes, dumplings, fried buns, dumpling wrappers filled with rice, rice wrapped in a leaf, Shanghai noodles, taro root, pork bits on the bone, a tea egg (very strange and oddly cinnamon-flavored), and so much more.  And we tried everything.

We were practically rolling out of the breakfast nook by the end, but it was worth it.  I did leave a few other savory dishes for the next morning (stay tuned and see what they are!), but felt that I had gotten a good crash course in breakfast.  If traveling has taught me anything, it is that a distinct breakfast cuisine is a very American thing (perhaps British, too).

As we set out on the bus for a full day of activities, the smog was fairly striking.  Our inside said that it was an overcast morning, but I wasn't sure how she could tell.  Everything g looked hazy, from the ground to the heavens.  When the sun broke through later, I could see the distinction, but still nothing was quite clear.  It was as if I was looking through contacts that were slightly the wrong prescription.  While this caught me by surprise, I was perhaps not as shocked as my bus mates were to discover that a simple syllable, like ma, could mean many, many different things (mother, horse, trouble, curtsy, question) depending on how it was pronounced.

We started the day at the Bund, the riverfront of the Whangpoo river, which serves as the center of the city.  Along its length is a pretty walk that shows off the hundred year old colonial banks on one bank and the towering, glittering, imaginatively-designed skyscrapers on the other.  People spent their time taking pictures of the river,

stalking cute Chinese babies,

or perhaps a bit of both.  For me, it was interesting the setting of some of the books I have read and to picture people here throughout the past century - shirtless laborers loading boats high with imports and exports, fantastically done-up women sashaying past with open parasols leaning on their shoulders.

Our next stop was the Yuyuan gardens, which were gorgeous.  Built over 400 years ago during the Ming dynasty, they were a cool and peaceful sanctuary from the heat and the hustle and bustle of the bordering city streets.  The buildings boasted carved wooden screens, separate passageways for men and women, and large curb-like pieces of wood at the entrances.  I learned that these were a demonstration of the homeowner's importance: the higher the curb, the more lofty his position in society.  The corridors for men and women had geometric openings between them that I learned were shaped like picture frames, as looking out them one could see the gardens.  Apparently many painters were also garden designers (does landscapers do them justice?) and by creating these frames for their work they could kill two birds with one stone.

After the gardens, we were released to have lunch on our own.  A large group set out to find a less-touristy area to eat.  I slipped away from the larger group with three co-conspirators, and we stumbled upon a street food market where stands selling whole half-watermelons (rinds removed) on sticks stood next to stands selling soups, seafood, and fresh-cooked dumplings.  

None of us were terribly hungry, so we just tried one of several things until we were full.  We started with blocks of seasoned tofu, one light and one dark, which upon later consultation we discovered was the infamous stinky tofu (chou dofu) that most people aren't brave enough to try.  None of us found it stinky or anything short of delicious, though.  Next we tried dumplings - one veggie, one meat (really delicious), and one that exploded with liquid that we realized was probable some form of soup dumpling.  They were all great.  We only bought things that were specially cooked for us, right in front of our eyes, to hedge our bets.  And we haven't gotten sick so far!

After lunch, we went to the beautiful Shanghai Museum for a grand total of 30 minutes (due to an unfortunate schedule change).  Due to the short time, I only got to do a quick walk-through of two galleries - bronze and ceramics - but they were beautiful.  The bronze gallery offerings convince me that about half of what ancient Chinese villages did was drink wine, though.  They did have a few other things, such as bells that were on display with a recording of what they would sound like, which was interesting.

Most of the afternoon was spent at Fu Dong university, a top Chinese university with an extracurricular choir (just like ours!) of about 200 people.  We worked with a small subset of the choir and did a musical exchange/outreach.  Despite most of us practically falling asleep from jet lag, we had a good time and the students seemed quite excited.  They thought it was pretty adorable when we tried to speak Chinese.  We were also lucky to have dinner with the university students in what I guess was one of their cafeteria spaces.  We had a true have a bit of everything dinner with a giant lazy Susan in the middle of the table.  It wasn't my favorite meal, but I still tried everything.

Finally, we went to the ERA Acrobatic Show.  It was incredible.  Acts ranged from a man on a balancing board flipping four stacked bowls on to his head to men creating a human-driven Ferris wheel and doing stunts, to contortionists stacking themselves in improbable configurations.  Seven men drove motorcycles around inside a huge wire globe without colliding, people were see-sawed fifty feet In the air only to land atop the shoulders of a multistory human tower.  Gymnasts flipped themselves through hoops 10 feet in the air without spring boards, and trampoline-flung bodies soared through the air.  Ribbon dancers suspended their partners in the air using only their feet.  It was very impressive.  It was everything that the new Cirque du Soleil lacks that the old Cirque du Soleil possessed.  Thank god someone is still putting on a good show!

I was supposed to go out around the city with a friend of a friend, but we arrived back late and still hasn't received our luggage.  I also had trouble getting in touch with my would-be host and found out that public transportation would have taken forever.  As a result, I wasn't able to meet up with him.  Given how packed the day had been, though, it was probably a good thing.  Well played, Shanghai.

Spotted: surreptitious photography.  Even as we were sneaking photos of adorable Chinese babies and grandparents, they were sneaking pictures of us.  I did have several old men come up and take pictures with me, though.  I guess they figured that it was better to just come up and ask.  Let the blonde adventure begin.

Beginnings from Endings

This week began with an ending: a college graduation.  There was pomp (given the circumstance), there were tears (mostly from my mother), and there were many, many hugs.  There was the horror of finding out that our cheap, synthetic black robes would bleed black rivulets onto our finery if it rained.  There was the pleasant surprise that sibling rivalries fade (albeit momentarily) in the face of pride in another's accomplishment.  And I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.  But I didn't cry.  Maybe I've just been waiting for this for too long (so I can get to medical school, not get away from college) to cry about it or wallow in nostalgia.

And this is a happy week.  Today, less than 48 hours after receiving my diploma, I have a new beginning.  I'm heading off to China with the Yale Glee Club for the next two weeks, the traveling alone or with various companions for the rest of the summer. I'll be stateside for about two days between now and August so that I can swap out my poofy black concert dress for something a bit more appropriate for hundred degree adventures.  I can't really picture myself learning to box or riding an elephant in a concert dress, which are pretty much the packing criteria.

Me in my grandmother's Thai silk dress. Can't wait for Thailand in a few weeks!

So, here's to the adventures that lie ahead.  And the memories that will manifest themselves as knickknacks tucked into crevices in my luggage or muddy speckles on my sneakers.

Spotted: Custom fortune cookies.  Our lovely China tour managers greeted us this morning with fortune cookies which we discovered have custom messages inside.  Most of them are quotes from our illustrious leader, Dr. Jeffrey Douma.

Shanghai Fumble

Somewhere along the way, Chinese Eastern Airlines dropped the ball.  From employing a disproportionate number of people to ask you to move up two feet in line to having the most confusing security set up imaginable, to leaving 30 minutes late and arriving over an hour late, things were just never quite right.

On the flight, I somehow got seated in the last row in the middle of a large group of Asian women who proceeded to mother me throughout the flight.  The nearest Glee Clubber was about 7 rows away. My new Chinese adoptive parents had the flight attendant bring me a pillow when they saw I didn't have one. They turned on my light when the cabin dimmed.  They whispered about me and then giggled and told me I was clever and beautiful.  They also had me sing for them and filmed it, as well as took several candids of me with the ladies.  Who knows, maybe ill turn up on YouTube one of these days.

Now, it was a 15 hour flight.  One that ended up taking 16 hours.  I had taken long flights before but for some reason I hadn't wrapped my head around how long 15-16 hours actually is.  I managed to sleep, finish a book, watch two movies, and brush up on my Chinese a bit.  And still there were hours to spare.  Standing up was a blessing, as tight muscles relaxed and stretched.  It was as though I had been curdled up inside of some little pod - a walnut or an acorn - and was experiencing this new freedom for the first time.  All I could think about was this movie about Easter Island where a girl has to sit deep inside a tiny cave for months.  I would go insane.

Anyway, we made it to Shanghai.  Or baggage, however, didn't.  About 2/3 of the group, or more than 50 of our people, are missing baggage.  My bag was one of the casualties, but luckily I have a wonderful, travel-savvy mother who has instilled in my a strong appreciation of the powers of carry-on luggage.  Many of the other students don't even have a change of clothes, let alone toiletries or other belongings.  So, thanks, Mom!

Spotted: When you fall asleep during a meal, Chinese Eastern flight attendants out this sticker on the seat back in front of you (where your TV screen would be on a less budget flight) letting you know that you can get it at any time.  I managed to perfectly miss both meals, so I had this sticker twice.  I didn't know what it meant, but my new tiger mothers had it covered.