Krass in the Grassland

Welcome to 'Who wants to be a grass millionaire?'. You as a candidate have to answer the questions as good as you can by yourself - apart from that you can use a joker, our grassland cow, our grassland sheep or our grassland horse. But be careful, a 'moo' from the cow might not imply the right answer.

Question 1: Where did the grassland travellers from Beijing (i.a. Katharina, her colleague-friend Ya Jun with daughter Sisi / Julia sleep?
a. in a farmer's residence. The room was just big enough to fit in three beds next to each other and nothing more. The bathroom had a comfortable Chinese style toilet with infrequent water and a wash basin with no water.
b. on a horse like real Chinese grassland cowboys.

Question 2: What are the specifics of a Chinese grassland (5 hours drive from Beijing, named Bashang)?
a. the Olympic discipline of counting sheep did take place there. No gold medal was given to the winner as doping was suspected because the winner had eaten a sheep the day before.

b. grass, grass, grass everyhere, small hills, some flowers, seldomly ever trees, wild horses, shepherds with sheeps, cows with cowboys on motorbikes, small rural villages.

Question 3: Can you imagine the writer of this blog on a horse?
a. Yes, but the poor horse!
b. She managed to ride a horse for the second time in her adult life (for four hours). Although the landscape around her was nice, after that her bum was quite sore and she swore to herself not to ride a horse again soon.
Question 4: Do you think she also mounted a horse in the afternoon?
a. What a stupid question - Of course not! She went on a jeep along bumpy streets (well, not really streets, but earthern country ways without asphalt and plenty of puddles). When she and her co-travellers arrived at the destination, the wind was so cold that they preferred to take some photos and quickly get on the jeep again.
b. She is now a 'Hanni & Nanni' kind of woman, bought herself a horse and rode back all the way to Beijing where her horse is now living with her in her city apartment.

I know that was a tough challenge. So here's the right answers: a,b,b,a. The winner of 'Who wants to be a grass millionaire' receives just a blade of grass, not a million of grasses due to the game manager's contribution to environmental programs - Congratulations nevertheless! By the way: The author of this blog had quite some fun in the grassland despite the excellent accommodation, her pain and bumpy country roads thanks to the people coming along on this trip and the beautiful countryside (well, the grass basically...).

More raindrops are falling on my head - Lijiang culture

"Raindrops keep fallin' on my head

And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed

Nothin' seems to fit

Those raindrops are fallin' on my head, they keep fallin'

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head

But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin' red

Cryin's not for me

Cause I'm never gonna stop the rain by complainin'

Because I'm free

Nothin's worryin' me"

(B.J. Thomas, lyrics of the song)

I followed the same motto. During my cultural explorations the rain was even heavier, but I didn't worry too much, took the umbrella from my cozy little hotel (Zen Garden hotel /Riheyuan, with excellent atmosphere and Naxi bread for breakfast) and went out in the search of... the charme of Lijiang and the minorities living in this old town.

The charme of the old town is obvious: canals, bridges, narrow cobblestone streets, Naxi style houses, small shops (of course it is touristy..), cafés and restaurants. It's over 800 years old, and guess what? Unesco World Heritage.

In Yunnan 21 minorities are living more or less peacefully together. The main minority in Lijiang (two third of the inhabitants), the Naxi, originate from the neighbouring province of Tibet. Astonishingly Naxi women still wear their traditional costume (not for tourists, but in everyday life). The Dongba are Naxi shamans working as healers (drive the devil out of people) or mediators between Naxis and the spiritual world. They still exist, but you cannot just decide to become a Dongba, which endangeres their future. To become a Dongba, your father has to be a Dongba as well and you have to be male. In order to make sure this profession doesn't cease to exist, the Chinese government allows Dongbas to have up to three children instead of the usual one child (Chinese one-child-policy).
One sub-tribe of the Naxi doesn't marry. Their culture is matriarchal. The men just spend the night at the womens' home and after some time the women quit the men and look for new lovers. When the woman is pregnant, paternity doesn't play a role - they raise the child by themselves. Women also inherited all property in the past when the parents died.
Naxi also had a own writing system consisting of pictographs which is also quite interesting.

If you want to know more about the Naxi, feel free to read e.g. wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakhi.

P.S: One of the photos is from a Naxi music show. The wikipedia link also includes some information about the famous Naxi music.

Raindrops are falling on my head - Yunnan nature

Dear readers of my blog :-), I split this trip into two parts: 'Raindrops are falling on my head - Yunnan nature' and 'More raindrops are falling on my head -Lijiang culture'.
When I arrived in Lijiang in Southern China, I had already a cold, my nose was running and I was coughing continuously. And what expected me there? Rain, rain, rain. I spent five days in and around Lijiang and every day it rained, except for the breaks in between. Luckily on those days I ventured the nature around Lijiang the weather was a little bit better (meaning it did not rain all day).

The nature around Lijiang (normal level is 1500-2000m above sea level) is manifold: rice paddies, mountains and ironically sunflowers everywhere. The earth is often of red colour like in the neighbouring countries (e.g. Birma). The highlights:

- Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (Yulong Xieshan). The Naxi minority (a minority in this area, see also the culture part) believes that their gods live there. From a nice meadow you sometimes can see the all year round snow-covered peak (when I was there it was hidden by clouds - yes, rain clouds of course). Until about 50 years ago, Naxi marriages were arranged when the children were two years old. When the children grew up, they used tof all in love with somebody, but seldomly with the person they were engaged with since young years on their parents' decision. That's why the harmless looking meadow used to be a mekka for youngsters in love committing suicide.

- Tiger Leaping Gorge (Hutiao Xia): Impressive! A 17 km long gorge, one of the deepest of the world. The continuous rain on the day before made the river rushing down even more impressive because more water was in it. Luckily, though, it didn't rain on the morning I was there - The days before it had been closed due to heavy rains and the implicit dangers at such a deep gorge. Legend has it that a Naxi hunter wanted to hunt. A tiger was leaping across the gorge, but for the hunter it didn't make sense to shoot him since the tiger was on the other side of the gorge where he could not have accessed his victim.

Olympic finals - Cheering for Germany

"I felt pure joy that I had finally achieved after so many years of hard work. Winning the Gold medal at the Olympic Games is the crowning glory."-- Sabine Spitz (GER)

" The atmosphere of the Olympics in Beijing was great! Good to have been here during this unique event." -- me (GER).

"The Beijing Olympics are a grand event for China and the world, but for people living in Beijing it has many downsides to everyday life: fuel prices increased a lot, also other prices increased significantly." - a Chinese cab driver (CHN)

Last day of the Olympics, last medalls, last event for me. This time waterpolo, a sport I didn't know much about. I know now that male waterpolo players tend to have a very athletic upper bodies ("Schrank"), wear very short and tight bathing trunks (rumors go the Greek team is the most sexy), that the rules include a 'bad boy corner' where a player who has fouled too much or too hard in defensive position is expelled from one attack of the opponent. And of course there was the famous white shark music... :-).

The two matches I saw were Germany against Italy and Australia against Greece (loosers named first). The entrance control staff wouldn't let the Germans build a German fan block (a big minus for the bad cooperation and the organisational chaos to the staff in the hall!), so we had to cheer from different places. I taught the surrounding Chinese people to cheer for Germany: "deguo, jiayou! 德国加油!" and soon we were a little bit a multicultural fan block for the German team, but unfortunately this didn't help a lot because the team nevertheless lost.

Quite fun was a Chinese boy (became a fan of Italy today) and long after the Italian game was over, in the middle of the Australia- Greece match he cheered: "Italy jiayou! Italy jiayou!". Pls. also note the deep blue sky in the stadium photo - I didn't fake it!

Tell me something I don't know about... and "Kloppt euch endlich!"

'Tell me something I don't know about... /The (un)known facts of yesterday's men semi-finals basketball in the Wukesong Stadium:

The participants: Spain (winner game 1), Lithuania, US (winner game 2), Argentina.
Best fans: Lithuanian fans. They shouted in their (to me) Russian-similar language and managed to make most noise.

Dunking winner: theUS team

Who could have won if: Lithuania, if their star players hadn't done too much fouling - two of the players had to leave the competition because of five fouls.

Atmosphere: quite quiet. To me it seemed that half of the stadium was sleeping.

My favorite player: Roca (Argentina)

Volunteers: helpful, but 'Chenglish' is a challenge. One volunteer gave me a black bracelet (German: Armreif) with some Chinese signs on it. She wanted to talk to me in English. So because I couldn't fully read what was written on it, I asked her: "What does it say?" She answered: "You must smell". I took a smell, but didn't notice anything and she was laughing. Clarification: She meant to say: "You must (i.e. should) smile", but used a wrong pronunciation.

"Kloppt euch endlich!" /Taekwondo

Because I am living in Asia right now, I wanted to see some Asian martial art contest at the Olympic games. I got some taekwondo ticket for women and men (prequalifation for quarter finals). The rules and the point system are not easy to understand for an outsider, but most of the fights were quite suspenseful and the many different kicks looked difficult. The odd one out was a round between two women where none of them wanted to attack and basically nearly all the three rounds nothing happened. We clapped our hands to encourage them, but nothing happened.

Most fans: Chinese flags were most to be seen.

Most lively fans: los Mexicanos. Pocos mexicanos hiciceron una fiesta incomparable.

Most astounding news to me: I didn'tknow that Taekwondo sportmen/ women tend to be that tall.

Interesting outsider: Mali (so far no medalls at all) made it to the quarter finals. Ever been to Bamako (the main town of Mali)?

Also interesting: The fightress from Egypt was wearing a veil (German: Schleier) while fighting.

Older again and Olympic fever

On Tuesday I had birthday but I had to celebrate twice this time: My Chinese colleagues always party their birthday the day or two days before their birthdate. So on Monday I decided to do as the Chinese do and buy ice cream for everybody after lunch. I informed my colleagues about my plan, but my colleague answered: 'We have to ask our boss first'. I was very surprised but later on I realised why: The free birthday rounds at work are normally not paid by the person having birthday as in Germany, but by the company. So my colleague had to get the permission to charge the expenses on the company. She didn't know I was planning to pay on my own. Monday after work we went for karaoke, where, because I had birthday (at least according to the Chinese definition) we got a big birthday cake and a bottle of Great Wall red wine to party. That was fun again! We all danced and sang. The video taken is so funny, but not really to be shown to anybody who was not part...

On my European birthday, a friend invited me to Merry Waterworld north of Beijing, a water amusement park with hot springs. Together with her daughter the three of us played water polo or just relaxed. In the evening I had a small dinner party with the extensive Frankonia-near German community.

Today then I was in the middle of THE Beijing event of the year for the first time: THE OLYMPICS. I had gotten a ticket for Diving (German: "Turmspringen") in the new Water Cube Stadium. Diving is a nice sport to watch: the sessions (today finals of women in 10m diving) are not too loong (in total 1.5 hours) and they do so many saltos and similar things. I was surrounded by the Chinese fans (see photo). Unfortunately, Germany was not participating. Guess who won? China! What an enthusiastic mood in the stadium! The strange thing was when I left the stadium in search for a cab to take me home there was a fully burning car on the road right in front of the main stadiums (including the Water Cube and the Bird's nest). I wonder why that was?

Tibetan impressions, holy hiccup and toilet seat hill

Tibetan impressions:

Under a deep blue sky (amazing) we drove out of Chengde into the hilly mountains around. Our aim: 'Xiao Potala' (the Little Potala) and the monastery Puning Si. Both of them are part of the so-called eight outer monasteries. In fact there are only four of five monasteries, maybe they chose to call it eight monasteries because eight is a lucky number in China, but this is only speculation. Interestingly, the monasteries were built because of politic / diplomatic rather than religious reasons. Some buildings are such only to be contemplated from the outside and inside there's nothing at all.

Our impression: Amazing! The Xiao Potala is an exact copy of the real Potala in Tibet. It is located on a beautiful green hill, fresh air... we just felt like in Tibet except that we had no signs of altitude sickness. Xiao Potala is an old copy of the potala built back in 1767 because the Manchu kings wanted to stay friends with the Mongols (at that time fervent Tibetan buddhists, i.e. lamaists).

The highlight of Puning Si is the tall wooden Avalokiteshvara (sanskrit name) / Guanyin (Chinese name) / Goddess of Mercy statue (the highest of its kind in the world). The Goddess has 42 arms with each of them holding something in its hands.

No wonder Agnes (a co-traveller) got a holy hiccup (German: Schluckauf) thrice that day -probably to express her favorable impression. With 35 degree sun from a blue blue sky burning down on us a spontaneous water fight was a welcome refreshment.

Last but not least on that magnificent day we climbed on a hill. Officially it's called club (German: Keule - Haegar laesst gruessen!) rock (Bangchui Feng) or hammer rock, but looking at it from far away it resembled more a huge seat - most probably a toilet seat and near the rock it indeed felt like just Haegar the Viking was missing. We just called it 'toilet seat rock' following our first idea. Needless to mention that the view down the mountain into the valleys and on the other mountains was fantastic on that bright and sunny day.

Thanks to Agnes & Joerg & the Manchu kings for this excellent trip!

Holiday in the Manchu kings' summer resort

Some things really make us angry. Nor many. But imagine a town 250 km away from Beijing. In that case the town is called Chengde. You want to go there. You choose the so-called fast train. And then you sit there and think: the speed of the train would be a perfect speed for jogging, maybe for riding on a bike, but definitely not for a fast train. Einstein is probably right about his relativity theorem. 4 hours for 250 km (the fast train) is fast compared to the 6-7 hours that normal trains need.

Chengde itself was flourishing in the 18th century when it was chosen as summer and automn residence by the Manchu kings back then. Now it's aUNESCO world heritage site and visited by tons of Chinese tourists (even at 8am in the morning the mountain resort is crowded. The resort itself has a palace (ok, but not the best we've ever seen), a Chinese landscape garden with ponds and lakes (nice to stroll around), many deer (German: Hirsche und Hirschkuehe) which are a Chinese longevity symbol and therefore have to be touched in any case, a grassland (Mongolian style) and hills. Just have a look at the photos to have an impression yourself.

Holy coaly and 'big together' in Datong

Even if you missed my sophisticated puns in the title of the blog entry, that's no problem :-)... Who or what is Datong? Nowadays Datong is the coal pit of China with plenty of coal trucks, coal trains (no wonder that the last steam engine train of the world was produced here in 1988), coal-fired power plants and supposedly coal dust all over the town. We were lucky enough not to see the last one - maybe due to the weather. Datong used to be the capital of the Tuoba. What, you don't know the Tuoba yet? (here comes my history corner...) The Tuoba were a union of Turkish-speaking nomads who united Northern China around 386 AD, converted to buddhism and built some magnificent buddha grottoes (the so-called Yungang Caves) near Datong.

But the most spectacular sight in and around Datong which we visited was the Hanging Monastery (Xuankong Si). In the morning there were no big hords of tourists there and we could enjoy the monastery in sunshine. How could anybody build a monastery in such a place? And why? The 'how' seems to be a clever kind of architect, however given the fact that it was built approximately 1400 years ago, it still looks like a world wonder to me. Climbing up and down the staircases inside the building complex felt quite eerie and the holes in the stairs with 'excellent view down the rock' encouraged me to walk cautiously. And why did they built the monastery on the rock? There are many theories. For safety, some say, because of the floods of the once-upon-a-time river in the valley (others say) and again others claim it's for the holy atmosphere up there.

Second place of interest are of course the Yungang Caves. With much love for details and artistic value, one cave tells the story of one of the buddhas (Gautama) from his birth to his life in a palace. I especially liked the scene of him riding on an elephant. Doesn't sound to you like a very Chinese idea? Well, maybe it isn't because the styles used here mixed Indian, Persan, Chinese and Greek styles. You can imagine that many parts of the caves are heavily destroyed (thanks to the coal dust, vandals including the cultural revolution, unsuccessful early restoration attempts etc)...

A grand opening! 奥运会 2008 / Olympia 2008!

Yippieeee! The Olympic Games 2008 have started in Beijing! And we were there! The Olympic expertise team :-) was watching the Grand Opening of the Games from a rooftop garden of a Chaoyang restaurant with a big TV screen properly dressed with new Olympic t-shirts (see photo). Zhang Yi Mou, the famous Chinese filmmaker, fulfilled the already high expectations as director of the opening ceremony. A great firework, thousands of Chinese drummers - we liked it; the performance was very Chinese ! When the athletes entered the new stadium (according to our knowledge the order depended on the number of strokes in the Chinese writing of the country name), the vibes at our restaurant felt just 很好 (excellent). The people in the restaurant were from a big variety of nationalities and thus nearly always somebody cheered. Maybe except for those countries which nobody knew nothing of and whose teams only consisted of three to five people only. Another two hours passed until all the athletes had entered in the stadium. We had cheered for Germany led by the basketball star Dirk Nowitzki, the whole restaurant had applauded for Roger Federer whom everybody seemed to know as well as for Rafael Nadal and of course the Chinese team (the biggest of all) got a frantic applause from the many Chinese and a warm greeting from all of us. The Olympic feeling has finally fully arrived in Beijing. I am looking forward to a fair and suspenseful competition!

Some more really good photos of the opening ceremony can be found at: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/sport/575/305543/bilder/

Forever wall

Once upon a time some Chinese emperor let build a Great Wall. Probably not for the purpose of us having a good Saturday trip out of town. Nevertheless this was our Olympic discipline for today: Ultimate Wall Climbing.

What to do if in an Olympic competition there is no 'enemies' at all because the Wall is deserted and no other tourists are there? Congratulations, then you normally have already won the Gold medal. Unless you try to climb up a steap hill where there is no official way and the sand hill moves in the opposite direction. Victims? my legs (red). Maybe there was some sense behind the sign saying: 'Forbidden to climb on the wall' and on the farmer warning us to take a lot of care. But it was worth the experience! The part of the wall at the Huanghuacheng section we visited was the most unique part of the Wall I've been to in China so far!

After that we went on to the 'Silver Mountain Pagoda Forest' (Yinshan Talin) - some old deserted pagodas in a fascinating mountain and forest landscape.

The first picture shows some pagodas at Yinshan Talin, the second one the Great Wall at our part of the Huanghuacheng section.

Chinese love story

If you now think because of the title of this blog entry: 'Katharina has found herself a Chinese lover' ,you are totally mistaken. No, today is just the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's day. "七夕"(say: tschi schi), literally the Day of the Seven" has a long history but not a history of giving presents and flowers to the beloved as it is in Western countries often the case.

The story of Chinese Valentine's origin goes as follows:

The seven daughters of the Goddess of Heaven caught the eye of a cowherd during one of their visits to earth. The daughters were bathing in a river and the cowherd, named Niu Lang, decided to have a bit of fun by running off with their clothing. It fell upon the prettiest daughter (who happened to be the seventh born), to ask him to return their clothes.

Of course, since Niu Lang had seen the seventh daughter naked, they had to be married. The couple lived happily for several years. Eventually however, the Goddess of Heaven became fed up with her daughter's absence, and ordered her to return to heaven. However, the mother took pity on the couple and allowed them to be reunited once a year. Legend has it that on the seventh night of the seventh moon (on the 'Day of the Seven' which this year is today), birds form a bridge with their wings for the seventh daughter to cross to meet her husband on earth.

Apart from that only Olympic news: This week I was on business trip to Suzhou and Tianjin and not only have additional airport security measures been taken, but also on the highway back from Tianjin to Beijing each car was 'security-checked' when re-entering Beijing.The driver told us they do that on every single road leading into Beijing. You can well imagine that this leads to traffic jams...

Also the number of Chinese flags on the streets and cars has increased a lot. But wasn't it the same at the World Football Championship in Germany (just the flag looked different :-))?

Beijing in ruins and many umbrellas

It seems that the measures to improve air quality are at least a little bit working because today we had a blue sky and could see as far as the mountains close to Beijing which seldomly ever is the case.

The old summer palace (yuang ming yuan) was crowded by Chinese men with trendy weekend dress and Chinese women with umbrellas to protect from the strong sun. Basically the so-called old summer palace are ruins and a nice park with a lotus pond. What makes it so interesting is the place's history: Constructed in 1747 by Jesuit missionairies in European style, the old summer palace was ironically destroyed by the Europeans (the English and French) in 1860. Also interesting to know: at the same time when European style was en vogue in China, the European kings and queens had Chinese rooms built in their residences and collected Chinese porcelain vases.

Zhongguo hua

Today I want to write about a Chinese proverb which I came acress and which I like.

Proverb about Friendship
路(lù)遥(yáo)知(zhī)马(mǎ)力(lì), 日(rì)久( jiǔ)见(jiàn)人(rén)心(xīn) . German transcription by me: "lue yau tschi ma ri tschju tschjen ren schin".
This is a Chinese proverb literally saying: "Over a long distance you learn about the strength of a horse (马(mǎ), over a long time you learn about the character (心(xīn), literally: heart) of a friend. It is used positively to praise a true friend or negatively to criticize friends that can't stand a test.

For those of you who haven't come in touch with the Chinese language a lot: the tricky things are the pronunciation (tones) and the writing. So if you follow my German transcription, but use the wrong tones out of the five available tones, still nobody might understand you.