Greeting the pellucid dawn with spongy egg.

The flight back was almost odd. I sat next to a thirteen-year-old girl from Sichuan. My Chinese was so terrible and her English so piddling that I'm still not sure where she was headed for her English summer camp. But Disney was in there somewhere. Anyway, she kept asking me what was great about America. Short of launching into a historical critique of race relations, I tripped out that we had many kinds of food and our students are lazy. I asked her what she liked so much about the US. All she could really say was "I like America. America is good." Then she launched into Chinese using vocabulary that I did not know, so I can only assume she was commenting on the American entrepreneurial spirit and ideals of democracy. Though I did catch something about liking Coca Cola. The flight also fed us cup-o-noodles and a egg dish that looked something like a gray log. The girl was like, is this what Americans eat? Ha, are you kidding, we eat much crappier things than this. She also kept calling me big sister, which totally weirded me out. Almost as weird as when a guy called me ya tou.

Hmm, there is actually much to fill in as to activities accomplished before leaving China.

this room is enormous! they built a hanger to contain these guys

we are coming for you!

kinda cool looking hairdo

an acrobat, but he looks about ready to karate chop someone, kee-ya!

- You can't, of course, go to Xian without seeing the Ching Shi Huang Di's tomb. Or at least the soldiers he buried with his tomb. His tomb is actually still a mound that the government won't excavate yet for fear they don't have the technology to destroy the greatest archaeological find they have. So there are 3 sites and a fourth that was never completed. It is crazy how much enslavement can create. I guess I couldn't get over how much death it took to build all these clay dudes. And how all the workers and craftsmen were later killed to keep the site secret. The best craftsmen made the generals then on to the lesser clay figures like the acrobats. And I guess if you made something sloppy you were conscripted to be wall filler. The sight itself was actually a bit underwhelming for me. Hm, I think not the usual reaction. Death in the ground!

ah, piece of cake...

big mountain. itty bitty cable car

lady in our cable car. she's been on this mountain like 100 times!

locks on chains. so what does it mean if your lock rusts?

ah, so many itty bitty people. climb those steps!

the razor's edge

Ecotope!

gotta love that bad English!

little finger peaks

a little temple on a mountain peak

Scary cliff thing requiring wire clips

Taoist statue with a crouching creepy dude behind him

kittie on the mountain with a swollen toe

- Spent the day climbing the peaks of Mt. Hua. We took a 2 hour bus ride out of Xian to where the famous Huashan stands. I guess the mountain is famous for once serving as home to Taoist hermits. It was also made legendary in recent times as the setting for popular kungfu novels. In any case after a series of ticket purchases we took a cable car up to the North Peak. From there we tried hiking around to the other peaks, a total of five. I think we maybe only hit 3 but that included trekking up stone staircases on razor cliffs and little pockets of food stands. The mountain was pretty crowded, mostly with Chinese tourists. In fact, we rode up on our cable care with a couple that said they have visited the mountain dozens of times and the wife said that she first climbed Huashan from base to top when she was 13. In 3.5 hours. Crazy! Really to get the full experience you have to start your hike from the base in the afternoon so that you catch the sunset on the west peak. Then spend the night in one of the 6 or so hostels on the mountain top. Then catch the sunrise on the easter peak. Also the thing to do if you are a newlywed couple is to have a steel lock carved with your names, which you then lock on one of the supportive chains on the peaks for luck. An excellent full package honeymoon! There was also this additional sheer rock pocked with metal bars, wooden planks, and holes cut into the mountain that we were only allowed to climb with clips and harnesses connected to a wire. It was freaking awesome! The flimsy cheap life insurance we had to purchase was a nice touch.

- Xian happens to be one of the few, if only, Chinese cities with its original city walls intact. They form a big square in the middle of the city. And, this is the coolest thing, you can rent a bike and ride the entire wall in about 1.5 hours, which is what we did. Of course it was also blazing hot and many of the stones are all potholey which made for some rickety riding on our rusty rented bikes. But super fun! Great to stop at different food stands to grab ming bean ice cream pops. My friend was trying to launch a business idea of marketing the solar panel water heaters we saw dotting the tops of apartment buildings.

- Hm, and then there was the fact that I mistaken the departure day and took an hour long bus ride to the airport to realize that my plane left yesterday so I had to take the bus back to the hostel to purchase another ticket, at which point a worker at the hostel just came with me b/c my Chinese was obviously doing me no good in getting me a new ticket. Um, yeah. But i did end up making it back to Beijing in time for my flight back to the US despite all. I did have a physical tussle with the hostel lady trying to give her some money for her trouble and travel back to the hostel and she ended up physically restraining me and pushing me toward the security check. Ah, that's what being Chinese is all about.

- Met my mom's cousin and his wife in Beijing for my last night. Got to stay at their apartment. It was so nice to meet nice relatives! And fun too to see the inside of someone's house in Beijing. The sense I get is that everyone lives in pretty cramped apartments megaplexes. Their little neighborhood overlooked a cute park though with like public exercise equipment. So like yellow and blue painted public elliptical machines. I was like wow, the playground here is for the seniors, not the kids. There were also some middle age ladies totally tearing up a pingpong table. Oh yeah, in Xian I also had a change to wail on a Canandian playing badminton. Rock on with the only sport that I have any skill in! Damn, that is about as Chinese as it gets...

Movies watch on airplane:
- Nim's Island - cheesy but sometimes your just gotta watch a kiddie movie, you know
- The Spiderwick Chronicles - sometimes a kiddie is just not watchable...
- Definitely, Maybe - is that Breslin kid in all the movies right now or what? she was in Nim's Island too. movie was entertaining but the ending was not.
- Be Kind Rewind - kinda cool movie actually

Total books read on the trip:
- Blink - Excellent!
- Lady Chatterly's Lover - The copy I got was published by the Foreign Language Press and rife with horrendous typos. Great book though, I can see why it is a classic.
- The Hummingbird's Daughter - Really, really good book! Weaves the story of revolutionary Mexico with the story of healer girl, who actually existed. The book moves so beautifully.

So now I am home again. Just putzing around my apartment in a stupor of jetlag. Gah, I have to go to work tomorrow like this?

China! Refuel!

There it is. Can you see it? The white lady waiting to light her torch. I had to get on a guy's shoulders to get high enough to see over the crowd. How did all those Chinese people in front of me get so tall?

So you think this kid is cute now...

This much cuteness should be illegal!

Oh yeah, they'll put you on tv if you're white!

So this morning we got up at 6 to join some hostel-mates in the streets of Xian to watch the Olympic torch go by, which in China means a lot of sweaty ppl in the streets. More than the usual amount of sweaty people. But it was actually really cool to see so many people of all ages excited and out. Lots of hawkers with the "I love China" shirt that everyone was sporting. Lots of Chinese flags and Beijing Olympic flags. The torch bearing and passing wasn't actually that impressive. I saw a Chinese guy light the torch for white lady who then lit a torch for another Chinese guy. That was pretty much it. The did have like party trucks that preceeded the torch bearers though with like cheerleaders and dudes dressed up in rubberized Chinese armor to drum up excitement. Wee. We had a big white dude from Arkansas in our group who was getting into the Olympic spirit with a "I love China" shirt, red band around his head, and a bigass Olympic flag. Various locals asked to take pictures with him and a local news crew came up to film him yelling in Chinese, "Zhong Guo, Jia You!" (essentially "China, You can do it!"). The other highlight of the experience being this very cute Chinese boy decked out patriotically and holding a little white puppy. Off the cuteness charts.

Ah, I haven't really commented on the Olympics. Here and there different ppl in the tourist industry have complained about the slowing of business because of the new restrictions on visas that were just added for the Olympics, though it appears to have affected some countries more than others. The price for a US visa pretty much doubled in April. A lot of travelers are trying to tour parts of China then hunker down in Beijing for the Olympics, but it is pretty surprising the scarcety of foreigners right now. No doubt most tourists are waiting for the Olympics. I really can't imagine the craziness that will be Beijing come August. The public transportation and taxis seem pretty maxed out now with the locals. I think the city will probably shut down once the Olympics start. As if there are not enough people here. But I think the general feeling is that people are excited and proud that China is going to showcase Beijing to the world. I'm just glad I will not be there to be robbed, crushed, or ripped off.

Zai Xian...

Our Xian Hostel. The nicest and helpful people ever. Met some interesting travelers too.

The street outside out hostel with lots of artisan carts.

And calligraphy materials.

The main gate of Xian's great mosque. No nails used. Not very Arab looking.

I seem some Arab script! Maybe this isn't just another Taoist temple.

This is a mosque?

The date on this inscription says this was made in 1365.

The main prayer room. Amazing that still mosque has been in use for centuries.

Mao watches! With severe chopping second hand! Get to work!

Artist man himself displaying his woodcut wares.

Ugh, just laying low in our new hostel in Xian, home of the start of the silk road and home of the terra cota warriors. The weather is way hotter here and my bowels have decided to rebel from a diet of spicy oil noodles and lamb kabobs. Oi. And the diet, heat, and sweating has reeked havoc on my face which is now sprouting a pimple that looks to be something of a third nostril on my nose. Oh, and now that we are not in Beijing where people were quite flattering of my broken Chinese, Xian-ers have made no bones about my crappy Chinese. Conversations have proceeded as thus:

- Oh, you speak Chinese!
-Yes!
- Wow, it really sucks. Your friend's Chinese is so much better. What's up with that?
- Oh, I was born in the US. My parent are Chinese. He grew up in China.
- Oh ok.

Then communication commences through my better-Chinese-speaking friend. I'm able to get around, but can understand about 60% of what people are saying. And then throw in some funky accents and it goes down to like 10%. But all told, Xian is really a nice change from Beijing. Not nearly so crowded and full of architecture that retains some character and continuity within the city.

We went to see the Great Mosque in the Muslim district. It was quite peaceful and is still actually used today since is it was built in steps centuries ago. The funny think is that al the buildings are very Chinese. If not for random Arabic script on signs, the ribbed roof tops and pagoda disguised minaret makes the place look like a Chinese Taoist temple park. Weird! But the food too in the shops were fantastic. And in the souvenir tents that swarmed the walkways outside the mosque we came across some beautiful woodcuts. The artist was there too and started to show us his exhibit books and articles that had been published about him. He was thoroughly proud of his work and excited to show it to us. It really was beautiful stuff and we ended up with our first mass souvenir purchases. I think I may need to upgrade the size of my apartment to accommodate my new woodblock scrolls. Pictures of the Chinese countryside and workers. We did a bit of bargaining but really the prices are amazing anyway with the exchange rate. Wee, i'll post pics as soon as I can.

Time to nurse my aching feet and roiling bowels!

Jiao tong le!

I see butt cheeks!

This dad looks like he's going to kill me. Get your baby to a real bathroom dude!

Scooter outside the temple.

Tai Ji Quan!

So many people...

Pretty roof tiles.

Peking duck! Greasy greasy...

Tiananmen Square. Mao is watching!

New performance hall glibly called "the egg." A bit spacey and out there. Characteristic of the dissonant look of Beijing.

Skewer of cicadas.

Skewer of scorpions and seahorse.

Outside of Forbidden Palace. March on young soldiers!

Palace in the center of Forbidden Palace.

Spiffed up new paint job.

Beihai Park. Look, the White Dagoba!

Sponge-brush calligraphy. He dude wrote my name for me, though he got one of the words wrong and also wrote that I was a Korean. Only way to explain how I can look Asian and have such miserable Mandarin.

The Great Wall rising in the mist.

The steepness and stairs would be enough to scare me off if I were a Mongol.

My feet hurt! So let's see... I don't think this post will be too detailed but I should mention some highlights.

- Butt pants. It seems like most kids up to the age of 2 wear crotchless pants sans underpants so that they can conveniently squat where they are to do their business. Seen way too many little kid butt cracks hanging out in Tiananmen Square and in and around temples. I know it saves on diapers but don't little kids sit in stuff?
- Man beaters. So the Chinese version of those unsightly wife beaters is a translucent white number where the neck and arm holes slope down a little too much, sometimes exposing man boob nipples. This is often tucked into shorts or pants that are pulled up very high on the waist.
- Demolition/construction. Beijing right now is mad about getting things ready for the Olympics. Everywhere there is the sound of jackhammers and cranes. Old historic neighborhoods, albeit all concrete and decrepit, are being razed and replaced with a cacophony of very slick but entirely mismatched condos, shopping malls, and hotels.
- People. Tai duo ren! I guess you could say that Beijing people have that New York kind of rudeness. Why? Because there are just too many damn people in the city. It is downright overwhelming. And it rubs off in the way ppl interact. With one restaurant hostess, she greeted every new customer with, "Kuai dianr!" Hurry up! To get anywhere you simply have to push. No pauses for niceness b/c if you stop you will lose your place or get smashed. Ppl have no qualms about getting up too close to you if it means they will get a space on the bus or get past you in line. Ah, so as if the city's heat and humidity doesn't make everyone smelly enough, you get to rub up against everyone else's bodies too. Nice!

So, mini observations aside, let's see about what sightseeing has already taken place.

- Temple of Heaven. Kinda turned into a local park with ppl doing taiqi, badminton, kicking a shuttlecock. Very calm and filled with trees.
- Forbidden City. Huge! There is no way to capture the size of this place. It is just enormous the area that is encompassed by the walls of the Forbidden City. It has a really gorgeous garden too. Overrun with Chinese tourist. One of those bodies pressing up against bodies experience at the entrance.
- Mao. The guy himself is kept in a glass enclosure that you can go see him at in the middle of Tiananmen Square. He is looking like he is now made of orange wax. Seeing him is free to the public but you do have to pay for packets of plastic flowers that you can lay at his statue. Which they simply sell over and over to people.
- Beihai. A lake park with an island in the center topped with a temple called the White Dagoba. Calm and lovely with paddle boats floating within.
- Wanfujing. A big shopping street with a street lined with regional food stalls. There are skewer shops that sell scorpions and sea horses on skewers!
- The Great Wall. We went to a less visited portion, apparently there are a few you can choose from. We had to take a bus and then hire a driver, who was our bus driver trying to make a few extra bucks. In any case, it was nice that we didn't hit the most tourist developed area of the wall so there weren't as many people there. Even so it had a road lined with souvenir stalls. "Hello, t-shirt. Many colors!" And then of course we took a cable car up to the wall. Which was amazing! What a sight to see! Battlements and wall snaking on the ridge of the mountains. Lots of steep climbing up steps. Lots of the battlements smelled like poop b/c that is probably what ppl do way up there. But really absolutely amazing. And than, which actually rivals the wall itself in coolness, we tobogganed down. Woohoo, zipping down a snaking toboggan slide was so so fun. At one point one of my friends got stuck and we had bottlenecking, but it all worked out and we didn't have to cash in our 1 Yuan insurance ticket. Nice!

In conclusion, my feet hurt. A lot. One more day of Beijing and then on the Xian where we will see the tombs of the terra cota warriors. Wee, vacations are excellent things. Hard on the feet, but good for the spirit.

Taxis don't stop in front of Tiananmen!

A very unhostel-like hostel.

The little courtyard in the hostel. Gorgeous!

Outside the entrance to our hostel.

The very hard to locate alley that led to our hostel.

Am finally safely ensconced in our hutong hostel. Man, you cannot get a taxi for nothing in Beijing!

So let me do some recap of the day. Went to work. Did home visit, rapped up work stuff, zipped out of there -- freedom! Caught a ride from my friend to SF airport. Got there super early as I am want to do at airports and settled in with Blink (I actually ended up finishing the book on the plane. So much that is applicable to how I have been feeling and raised questions for me around child welfare. Anyway). The flight was 12 hours long. So needless to say I felt like a dehydrated zombie once I disembarked in Beijing. (Watched The Golden Compass and Martian Child. Why do planes always play the cheesiest American movies? They were also playing a Korean movie about a woman with a brain tumor who falls in love with the brother of her deceased husband. Isn't that like every Korean movie?) But Beijing's airport was gorgeous. You can see all the work they are putting into everything for the Olympics. I still have doubts if transportation will truly be up to snuff, as evidenced by the lack of available taxis! But more about that.

So I stuck around in baggage claim to meet my 2 friends arriving from Seoul. Chatted with a diplomat from Egypt there to meet some people arriving from Cairo. I also saw a flight arriving from Pyong Yang, which I thought was a bit wild. The airport is absolutely swank. And filled with young employees, some cutting up a bit with luggage carts. I met my friends and we grabbed a bus into Beijing. The weather is humid and appeared foggy, which turns out to be smog. So thick it is like fog. After a few hours my nose is starting to burn a bit.

So we ended up getting dropped off in front of Tiananmen, which really made real that we are in Beijing. There it is. Huge plaza, inclined planes for millions of ppl to stand and gather. Mao's face, huge and looming over the square. The whole area was dark, but bathed in lights that shone off the wet pavement. Amazing. One minute in SF, the next in Beijing. Traveling always trips me like that.

So then was the 2 hour struggle to hail a taxi. Until we found out that taxis can't stop on the big main street. And once we were able to flag down 2 taxis, after streams of filled ones, the drivers said they didn't know where our hostel was and zipped off. Crap! It was 10pm and were walking the streets not knowing ourselves how to get where we needed to go! Technology saved the day. We busted out a laptop to figure out what buses we could take. The bus ticket lady thankfully knew where were headed and about a mile off from where we were we got down at a shady alley. These hutongs remind me of pueblo streets in Mexico. Narrow and badly paved. Little shops doting the gated dwellings. Dude, one things I have to comment on is that Chinese ppl are so unhelpful! Geez, they will throw you off just so that you will leave them alone! Cursed failing of Chinese culture... Anyway. Time to get clean and showered, reposing in my nice clean hostel bed. So far so good! Not robbed! Not injured! Wee!

Beijing on my mind...

So, I'm going to Beijing in two weeks. That is provided that the Chinese consulate grants me a visa. I've gone to the office twice and been turned away for insufficient documentation. Keep in mind that I have to drive from Oakland to San Francisco, leave on a work day and get a number and wait in line, only then to find out that I was supposed to bring my airline tickets or signature and id number for a relative in China. It's ridiculous! How am I going to get into this country! Argh!!! I chatted in the waiting area with a white girl from Stanford, going to the Beijing Olympics to watch her friend on the women's polo team. And she's also seeing Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Bali. Oh man. I won't have that kind of time to travel ever again... In truth though, long trips make me antsy and I tend not the enjoy them. This jaunt to China will include Beijing and Xian and will be a whirlwind of sightseeing. A perfect antidote to burnout with with my job. If I can just get my visa! So things that need to happen on this trip to make all this grief worth it:

- I get hugged by a panda baby that tells me, "Wo Ai Ni!"
- I eat original, served-to-the-emperors, recipe peking duck
- I discover a new tomb of terra cotta chickens at Chi Shi Wang's tomb

Every felt like you were falling out of an airplane?

Well, I have, and did! Last weekend I took the plunge out of an aeroplane. Something that I had planned with coworkers back in January, on a whim. I'm glad it took a few months to carry out though until the weather was better and I knew what I was getting into. It was astonishingly safe. I really did not feel that my life was in jeopardy at any point, but it was still absolutely terrifying. More so once I saw other ppl falling out the plane ahead of me and then it was me with my feet dangling out of the door of our itty bitty plane and then me falling face first to the earth. That was also really scary. A lot of Ahhh! Oh my god! And then the dangling with the parachute above was nice and still scary. Then my tandem instructor spun us around, which was very terrifying. But we made it safely to the ground. It was incredibly hot too out there in Davis that day so it was a sweat fest through our jumpsuits. The air did feel great up at 13,000 feet, though.

I'm starting to feel like I need escapes like that from my work though. Jumping out of a plane, taking trips, getting away from Oakland. My job is getting to be overwhelming. I got some new cases and while trying to get a grasp of what is going on with the parents on those cases I've still got court reports to wrap up and issues popping up on my other cases. It's hitting that wall where I feel like I'm losing my mind because I can't do what I need to do in the time I have. And then just the pure newness still of the work itself and having to learn for the first time how to make a placement change, set up therapeutic visitation, how to determine when a kid can safely return home. And what kills me is that I'm always thinking about my clients. I'm writing this from home in Houston. A kind of respite from Oakland, but a plunge back into being at home and reliving all the reasons I had left. But it's better strangely. I can handle things better. My dad telling me that my job is horrible and I should do acupuncture. My older sister rifling through my stuff and throwing away my collection of pens. And it's ok! I would normally have thrown a fit and stewed with anger and vitriol. Well, we still have a few more days. Let's hope the sanity hold out. Or I will need to jump out of another plane.

Oh, I'll post pics once I get them of the plunge into the stratosphere!