Katharina in Beijing

Final thoughts

2008-10-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting in Germany in my new apartment (finally with internet and near my boyfriend, but I still need some time to really arrive) and thinking about my year in China which ended not long ago. Would words qualify to adequately put my experience in a nutshell? Or would this nutshell be overloaded and sink into the deep sea? I decided to quote three sources to give some hint of final thought, but I am sorry not to be able to cover all aspects of my experience. China, my Chinese friends, the Chinese culture and language – This is a Zaijian, not a bye-bye!

Confucius (Chinese philosopher):

'Wherever you go, go with all your heart'

Rosenstolz (only available in German):
'Irgendwo dazwischen'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQCFprahJq4

Jose Carreras and Sarah Brightmen:
'Amigos para siempre'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p25SJFT3yOw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmHixVChbR4&feature=related

万古朋友?!

2008-09-17T06:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight after work I had my official farewell party with my colleagues and my boss. Because we eat Chinese food everyday, I decided to go for something different, in this case German food. In Beijing there are around five German restaurants, but one of the best and most cozy ones - as the guide books claimed -is the 'Bodenseestube' above the South-German bakery. So that's where we went. The Knoedel (dumplings) didn't really convince my colleagues, but 'Schweinehaxen' (meat), 'Weisswuerste' ,'Wienerle' (two types of German sausages), 'Kaesespaetzle' (cheese swabian noodles), 'Flammkuchen' and especially pretzels were positively approved. I really enjoy going out with my colleagues because we just laugh so much together. Afterwards we went shopping and took some pictures. Tomorrow is my last working day in China. I will miss my nice colleagues and hope they follow my invitation to come to Germany some day, but anyway I am sure we will stay in touch.

Home invitation

2008-09-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we didn't have to work in China because of the public holiday on Sunday. My boss had invited some colleague-friends (incl. two daughters) and me (with no daughter :-)) to her home in... well, some suburb of Beijing. We looked at her old photos (wedding, highschool, university etc), which was quite some fun, and at her fishes & crab. Afterwards she invited us to a restaurant in some kind of botanical garden and she used her professional equipment to take some photos of us all.

Today after work a colleague-friend invited me to some exquisite mushroom soup restaurant with her family - you possibly cannot imagine how many kind of mushrooms there are in China! Yummie! And I already received many most lovely gifts: small panda bears from my Chinese teacher here, a necklace and a Chinese silk fan from one colleague and a Beijing Opera Mask decoration for my new apartment from another Chinese friend. I will definitely miss many nice people here in China! But the countdown still shows three day...

Moonstruck and mooncake poisoned on 中秋节 / Zhong Qiu Jie Festival

2008-09-14T00:02:00.000-07:00

Today is a Chinese festival, the Mid Autum Festival. Once again it's pretty much a festival connected with special food, in this case so-called 'yue bing' s, mooncakes. Mooncakes are small sweet cakes in different variations and with different fillings. Favorite fillings are an egg yolk , green tea and nuts. Moon cakes are famous gifts around the festival day and I also received some, but well... just a try of each type convinced me that mooncakes are not going to be my favorite food. So when we went to my last big brunch in China today, I preferred other food options to mooncakes...

Apart from eating mooncakes, the festival is famous for visiting lantern shows and looking up in the sky at night to admire the full moon which supposedly is the 'fullest' full moon of the whole year.

The Techno Chicken leads our way

2008-09-13T05:30:00.000-07:00

8 am in the morning. Mr Liang's (our driver) new car (a Honda) was waiting for us in front of our condominium. On the way Mr Liang played his new techno CD with the "Techno Chicken Song" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8vafsaT0Wo at high volume... and we were more than awake when we reached our first destination also thanks to this extraordinary song.

Longqing Gorge (Longqing Xia) offered the following:
- an old rusty elevator, shaped and painted as a dragon from the outside, which can be found in the Guiness Book of World Records for being the world's longest chain of escalators in the world (258 m)

- boating in the gorge, climbing the mountain, watching wire rope artists and people bungee jumping and climbing the mountain of the Pagoda of Impression (most probably because on the way up you always have the impression that you have soon reached the top which is not true)

- a kitsch cave with fake cherry blossom, fake snow, fake panda bears, fake... well, everything was quite obviously fake and plastic.

Techno filled our car again as we approached our next stop - Guyaju (old apartments inside a hill, i.e. cave dwellings). It seems that the tribe of Xiyi lived inside these caves AD618-907, but it is unknown why they chose to live there. The mountain as a whole resembles an emmental cheese nowadays.

Summer palace revisited

2008-09-11T01:56:00.000-07:00

"Every king or sovereign has to have a garden where he can promenade and where his eyes and mind can have a rest after the daily audiences are over and his public duties have been duly carried out. If there is such a place his mind feels fresh again and his temper well-balanced. Elsewise sensual desires would take hold of him and weaken his willpower." quotation of the young Qianlong king about Chinese landscape gardens like the summer palace (yiheyuan, 颐和园)

“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.” Spontaneous Beijing

2008-09-10T00:41:00.000-07:00

Why am I writing so often these days? Because I am enjoying some holiday:-). Today I followed the budhist saying "The way is not in the sky, the way is in the heart", looked at a Beijing map and decided to drive to Fayuansi, a buddhist temple not mentioned in my Beijing guidebook. My intuition was right: under a wonderful blue sky I visited this treasure of old buddha statues (some extraordinary ones like a wooden reclining buddha of 7.4 m), quiet courtyards and eager buddhists reciting buddha's words (some quite fast which made it sound a little bit like rap). Next to the temple was an old hutong which automatically made me want to enter and that's what I did. I followed the hutong lanes passing old houses, old men and women sitting on the street talking or playing Chinese chess, greeting me followed by the usual "hen gao, hen gao" (so tall - referring to my height) muttering. In some part of the hutong the wrecking ball ('Abrissbirne') showed signs of its presence and I wondered once more if that was a good or bad thing or maybe a combination of the two.

At the end of the hutong the atmosphere of the quarter changed: I had entered the biggest Muslim quarter of Beijing. Men wearing hats and long beards, women wearing a headscarf or in rare cases even a burqa mingled with Han Chinese. A small market sold muslim pastries... and I also found one or two mosques. One of them (called Niu Jie, Ox / Cow Street, existent since 996 AD) was open for visits and reminded me a lot of the Xi'an mosque which also has a distinctive Chinese style to it. What a 松快 day!

Saying goodbye to the pandas

2008-09-09T03:41:00.000-07:00

The countdown of last ten days in Beijing will start tomorrow. But I already said goodbye to the national animal of China today. Where? In the Beijing zoo. They house several giant pandas brought there from Southern China for two main reasons: The Asian games (house 1) and the Olympic Games (house 2). From my Chengdu report you might already know that I like pandas. And they are vegetarian like me: "The panda has a diet which consists almost exclusively of bamboos." Here is the ultimate question for clever brains:-): which of the pandas on the photos are fake and which are real ones I saw in the zoo? One of the pandas was a special cutie: when I stood in front of him he turned to me and poked his tongue out at me!
The rest of the zoo was in parts quite shabby: broken glass, small enclosures and a little bit smelly in some parts so I left it soon and just visited the pandas and the fishes. Here is my opinion: Free the animals or treat them better! To properly finalize the panda experience I got myself the DVD of Kungfu Panda... and that's gonna be the movie for 2nite. A quote from the movie for you:

"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift, and that is why it's called the present."

"Das Gestern ist Geschichte, das Morgen nur Gerüchte, doch das Heute ist die Gegenwart und die zu erleben ist ein Geschenk!" Maybe that's a true quote, but I am nevertheless going to miss the cute pandas and probably that's a good reason to come back some time...

Has the Mummy come back? Sandsliding in Tianmo desert

2008-09-08T01:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday another day trip brought us to:

-the smallest desert I've ever been to (well, not that I have been to many deserts...) named Tianmo. The tourist homepage of Hebei (the name of the province) proudly announces: "There are two grand sand dunes. The east sand dune is more than 300 meters long from north to south and the west one is nearly l,000 meters long." Couldn't have written that better - it's just that: two rather tiny sand dunes. We slid down the dunes, took photos, refused to take a horse ride (how bizarre to offer a horse ride in the desert) and looked for the mummy ('Die Mumie) but it didn't show up and scare us. Why the mummy? Tianmo desert and the surrounding areas are also a famous spot to film movies (some Chinese Hollywood), i.a. also a part of the film about the mummy's return was filmed there.

- a small ancient town named Jiming Yi. The village once had city walls of which most parts are still existing. It used to be an important post office of imperial times. Well, that doesn't mean that there was a postbox, but rather the messengers could exchange their horses there for fitter ones. The old town is quite relaxed: many old people still live there (we had the chance to visit some houses; the main decoration used are a TV and a big Mao poster) and there is not even a single souvenir shop (which is strange due to the fact that not many, but sufficient Chinese tourists come there).

Moo! Lele, the cow looks like a robot.. Opening Ceremony Paralympics

2008-09-07T05:33:00.001-07:00

The Olympics are over, but Beijing is not yet falling asleep:the next big event started yesterday, the Paralympics. And this time we managed to get some tickets - thanks to the organisation of Agnes mum! Paralympics are for those athletes who have a 'body disability', i.e. wheelchair, blind, one legged etc. (For mentally ill people there's yet another Olympics, the Special Olympics..)

福牛乐乐 (the cow Lele) is the mascot of the 2008 Paralympic games. Interestingly, at the Paralympics there is also at least one discipline which doesn't exist in the normal Olympics named 'goalball'. What is goalball about? It's for blind or partially blind people.

"Participants compete in teams of three, and try to throw a ball that has bells embedded in it, into the opponents' goal. They must use the sound of the bell to judge the position and movement of the ball. Games consist of two 10 minute halves. Blindfolds allow partially sighted players to compete on an equal footing with blind players."

The Opening Ceremony was great! Again Zhang Yimou was the director and his composition was a mere pleasure except for the cow Lele dance where Lele more looked like an ugly robot than like a cow. When we entered the National Stadium (named bird's nest), there was a big bag waiting on our seat containing a Chinese flag, a IPC (International Paralympic Committee) flag, a torch, a bell to make noise etc. Before the opening ceremony began, they taught us how and when to use those devices. Quite some fun! And already more than worth the 80 kuai (8 EUR) which we had paid as entrance fee :-). They also managed to integrate the spirit of the paralympics into the opening ceremony by letting disabled people perfom e.g. a blind piano player, a wheelchair ballet dancer (of course from Sichuan). There was also a firework (not only then the stadium was trembling). In total 80.000 visitors. And the Olympic fire was lit in a spectacular way by a wheelchair athlete who, just using his hands, climbed up a long cord to the top of the stadium..

Alles in Buddha - Beijing Acrobatics &Pedicab tour

2008-09-06T01:47:00.000-07:00

Here in Beijing there's still "alles in buddha". My final countdown of days here has started, but that's just a reason to join even more activities than before and don't wonder if I am writing too much in the next two weeks and you can't follow anymore.

Yesterday night we went to the Acrobatics show at Beijing Chaoyang Theatre. A show with real parrots and astounding acrobats (some seem to have rubber bodies because they were so flexible). And if you ever wondered if it feels comfortable to sit on one bike with two persons, well, they managed to pack over twelve people on one small standard bike!

Today in the morning I went to a hairdresser's. I think I didn't tell you yet that hairdressers here tend to be different from Germany:In Germany hairdressers are usually neatly dressed perfectly styled women. In China hairdressers are young unconventional men with tattered jeans ('zerrissene Jeans') whose own hair style looks quite unconventional as well. But luckily they still manage to cut my hair quite okay.

"Aller guten Rikschas sind zwei". After that I met Agnes and her parents who are on visit those days and we joined a Houhai pedicab ('Rikscha') tour - with Chinese language explanations and just three persons on one pedicab (we're not as good yet as the real acrobats from yesterday's show). Quite relaxed and also our drivers had no hurry. We visited some 'siheyuan's', the typcial old Beijing hutong buildings (20 yuan each) and refused to visit a third one because they were quite similar (not only in the price) and damn crowded. In one of the siheyuans I also rang the 'good wishes will come true' bell. And now? 'Noch ist nicht aller Peking abend'.

@Mona: danke fuer die Inspiration fuer eines der Sprichwoerter. Warte nun auf deinen Teil :-).

Cockroach attack

2008-09-02T05:24:00.000-07:00

This time no travel adventure, but everyday challenge. In our office there are around thirteen people (the whole accounting and corporate controlling department) and it seems at least as many nasty unpleasant little animals. Nearly twice a week one of us women is shouting: "Aaaahhhhhhh!", followed by some jumping away from the respective desk and next: "He Yi, lai ba!" He Yi is one of the few male colleagues in the office. He Yi then tries to settle the matter.

So when some Chinese colleague wanted to know from me what to answer on the phone when I'm not in the office and somebody is calling me in German or English, I taught her some sentences like "She is in a meeting", 'She is having her lunch." as well as "She has escaped from the office because there are too many cockroaches"...

Krass in the Grassland

2008-08-31T05:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-29T00:21:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-08-28T23:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-23T21:36:00.000-07:00

"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!"

2008-08-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

'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

2008-08-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-11T22:53:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-08-09T06:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-09T06:12:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-07T05:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-02T06:06:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-02T05:28:00.000-07:00

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.

Thousand Island Lake

2008-07-31T08:45:00.000-07:00

"You want to have an island of yourself? Come to a place called Qiandaohu (Thousand Island Lake)! This lake has more than 1000 islands (1078 smaller and bigger islands) on it. Most of the islands are covered with forests, the water is crystal clean and every day definitely more than 1000 Chinese tourists, sometimes additionally up to three foreigners per day are cruising with boats on the lake."

"You want to escape the Beijing pre-olympic hype? Don't go on planes, go an a boat near Shanghai (about four hours drive away from Shanghai). If you go on planes, you have to go through additional long-lasting security checks with dynamite and drug dogs at the airport (although a Chinese colleague travelling with me on the business trip suggested that they should actually use pigs because their nose is better than dogs' noses, but just imagine the police at the airport walking around with a pig...). Where in the past five persons were queuing for a taxi, now over 50 persons are waiting and it takes you over 35 minutes to get on a cab. "

There's of course more reasons than just that to go to Qiandaohu. I actually enjoyed the trip with my Chinese travel tour very much. Chinese travel tour meant: 11 Chinese, one Chinese tour guide (of course only speaking Chinese) and me. That's authentic travelling in China organised for me by nice Shanghai colleagues (first reply from the agency: "We don't take foreigners on the trip.", so they really had to persuade them that I do speak Chinese, that I am not dangerous etc.).

The highlights?

- the boat cruise on Qiandaohu. Climbing on top of the mountain with a Chinese family and taking photos...

- Bamboo rafting on a river nearby. Luckily we didn't have to construct the bamboo rafts on our own.

- the "laowai" warning / warning to foreign tour members (i.e. me). At noon on the first day the travel guide warned me: "Well, the hotel might not be what you expect it to be, but rather Chinese and rather basic." What a surprise! Of course for the full tour including bus from Shanghai, including all entrance fees, boat cruise, bamboo rafting, cave visit, travel guide etc. for a total price of 60 EUR (600 RMB) I was expecting a 5 star hotel with all comfort :-). But the warning was exaggerated because the hotel was actually quite ok.

- my first ice cream with green bean taste. Needless to mention that I didn't finish the ice cream, however it was difficult not to eat it up because a Chinese family on the trip had given it to me as a present.

- my first buddhist 'church service'. Afterwards the others went in small groups to see the monk in person and receive some suggestion. One Chinese friend on the tour received the recommendation to be 'generous'. So because I didn't have a sun umbrella or cap to protect myself from the sun, she gave me a new sun cap as a present. Luckily she didn't give me a sun umbrella...

That was my trip to Qiandaohu which I did last weekend from Shanghai.

Buddha in a Bunker in Shanghai

2008-07-31T08:33:00.000-07:00

After having come back to Beijing on Tuesday noon last week, I was told that I was supposed to be going to Shanghai and Nanjing on Wednesday on a business trip again. There I staid until today night.

In Shanghai I didn't do much sightseeing anymore, I only visited Jing'an Temple. Lonely Planet writes: "Anyone familiar with the layout of Buddhist temple may be shocked at the flight of steel stairs in the main courtyard leading to what resembles a World War II German Bunker". I can only confirm: I have seen many temples in China (and Asia) so far, but this by far the most bizarre temple I have ever been to. They had buddhas in a concrete bunker there! Just have a look at the photos to have some impression yourself.

New challenges

2008-07-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

My trip to Germany was successful: I am starting to work as a Commercial Project Manager for automotive projects from the 1st of October in Nuremberg. Bad news for you enthusiastic readers of my blog: My China blog will end then :-). Hey, but still some time to go...
Now I will start the search for a nice appartment in Nuremberg. Reservations for my guest room in Nuremberg are already possible :-).

The importance of numberplates

2008-07-22T03:02:00.000-07:00

The main purpose of my trip to Germany was to look for a new job for the time after I return to Germany. The job interviews were mostly very positive and I shall of course inform you once it has been decided where I shall be from October onwards.

Apart from that I spent a good time thanks to many of you who I had the chance to meet again and chat with. The weather was not that much of a pleasure and reminded me much of the German saying:"April, April, der weiss nicht was er will.", just that it was not April, but July. I'm really happy to have escaped the German weather again. The first photo shows Nuremberg as an exception with good weather, the second a Frankonian piece of art, the weird 'Totholzgarten' (Dead Wood Garden).

Back in Beijiing I didn't recognize Beijing. It was an 'olympized' version of the Beijing I was used to live in. On the Airport Expressway only two lanes are for 'normal people' now, the third lane is reserved for the Olympics, probably for the sports people and organizers? And there were cameras every now and then. My taxi driver drove quietly and slowly without the usual horn and zigzag - take over - manoeuvres.

In work my colleagues confirmed what I had already read in the German newspapers: Cars with even and uneven numberplates take turns in being allowed to drive. However, clever Chinese who can afford two cars already know how to solve this challenge. A colleague of mine and her husband possess two cars. Both of them had even numberplate numbers. Last week the husband got himself a new numberplate with an uneven number. Thus every day one of their cars can be used. But most Chinese cannot afford two cars, so the roads were still astonishingly empty. Dream of olympisation???

Coming home again

2008-07-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am in Germany again. This time to look internally for a new job. The timing is not really perfect given the fact that my company currently wants to cut many thousand jobs in Germany.
So far everything was nice, except for the weather on the weekend (rain, rain, rain). I was able to meet my old department in Germany, had some job interviews already and spent the weekend with my boyfriend. Currently I am in a nice Eastern German town with the the "first internet hairdresser". I just wonder: how can one cut hair via the internet? Unfortunately I don't have time to try it out because I go back to Southern Germany tomorrow.

Pig Home's Corner

2008-07-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

Pig Home's Corner is a watertown about two hours by car from Shanghai. Its Chinese name is Zhujiajiao, one of the many Chinese 'zhu' means pig, but not the one of the watertown, 'jia' means home, house and 'jiao' means corner. So even though the first part in reality doesn't mean pig, it was easier to remember it like that. At the same time of my business trip, a Chinese colleague-friend from Beijing was also in Shanghai for a training. So we decided to do an out-of-town trip together and the wife of a university colleague of hers, who lives in Shanghai, joined us with her daughter.

That was fun! Zhujiajiao was a good choice because there were hardly any tourists there and I would say it equals or is even more beautiful than other watertowns around Shanghai.

The trip didn't start that well. The Shanghai friend picked us up from our hotel, but she didn't know the way to the highway so she stopped next to a policemen and wanted to ask him the way, but before she could say a word, he told her she was not allowed to stop / drive here and imposed her a fine. A Shanghai women with hot temper of course doesn't accept that, but starts arguing. Ten minutes of shouting later, we drove on and she still had to pay the 100 kuai fine. From that on we didn't ask policemen for the way anymore.

In Zhujiajiao we strolled around the anicent town with its beautiful bridges, took many photos, shopped some things including each one of us a Chinese style hairpin in a different colour so we all pinned up our hair in the same ancient Chinese style. We also visited a tea house where Apple (that was the English name of the daughter) played the 古琴 / Guqin for us, a Chinese style zither. Last but not least a boat trip around was a perfect end to our visit of the Pig Home's Corner.

Hot in Shanghai

2008-07-05T06:22:00.000-07:00

Shanghai again. I had to go there on a business trip as consultant to our joint ventures there together with an external consultant.

The difference to my last visits? Now it's summer in Shanghai! Which means: around 37 degree celsius and extremely humid air (75% humidity)! Basically spending time outside was not really a pleasure.

That's why I didn't visit much outside, but mainly inside. I saw my first acrobatic show of the Shanghai Acrobatics Troupe. It was quite amazing how flexible human bodies can be and often I just thought: "Ouch! This must hurt!", but the acrobatics still managed to smile. Second indoor visit: The Shanghai Ocean Aquarium with the world's longest underwater tunnel (155 m) -some fish were very nice, others looked scary although they were harmless and again others looked harmful and just were that. Third visit: an area called Xitiandi in the former French concession with a Shikumen museum. Xitiandi in one word: boring. Why? Rebuilt French style houses, international restaurants, foreigners there: more than 50% and the Chinese seem to mainly visit the place where the Communist Party held its first national congress or to have a look at 'laowai's' / foreigners. The Shikumen musuem in one word: xing. Why? Shikumen is a unique architectural style in Shanghai like the Hutongs in Beijing and it's interesting to see how people used to live in Shanghai some time ago.

Di san tian / Third day

2008-06-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

Yangshuo itself it no big surprise: The favorite place of western tourists to stay overnight in the Guilin region, it's quite touristy, but nevertheless okay. They say it's famous for pickpockets, but luckily I didn't get in personal contact with them.

Fuli Old Town is half an hours drive out of town, an old farming town with old to 'near-to-destruction' houses with red lucky new years posters and Mao photos on the walls. We also passed the hairdresser's. An old rusty seat with a broken mirror in front, but seems to fit the purpose. Right now those small agricultural village have one challenge: all the young people who can are leaving for the big towns. Mainly old people live there.

The highlight of the day was Moon Mountain. That's the formation you can see in the first photo! with me in front. The view down the mountain was also amazing and was worth the exhausing thirty minutes hike up the hill in 30 degree, sunshine and extremely humid air (the last one being the factor which makes it hard for me).

Last but not least 'Shangrila'. Well, who knows where the real Shangrila is? China has at least two, one near Yangshuo, one in Yunnan. Shangri-La is a fictional place described by British author James Hilton . In his book, "Shangri-La" is a mystical, harmonious valley, the people who live there are almost immortal, living years beyond the normal lifespan. The Shangri-La near Yangshou is a park of minorities where you drive around with a boat through the karst landscape and see minorities dancing and / or singing. Not quite what the book describes Shangrila to be, but nevertheless not bad. So I still have to continue looking for my personal fairyland of Shangrila. But often things you are searching hard are just in front of you...

Cruising on Li River

2008-06-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

Every tourist to Guilin does a river cruise on the Li river (shui / water) passing the karst mountains (shan / mountain). In winter the river is totally dry and no boat can go on the river, however, now being rain season, there was sufficient water.

The boats started at 9:30 am. The boats meaning: around one hundred boats at the same time, one driving after the other. That's Chinese mass tourism at its best! And one hundred boats is low season, as I was told they have up to 300 boats. Most of the people on the boats were Chinese and Chinese love taking photos of themselves in front of famous rock formations. Famous rock formations were the rock ressembling 'Guanyin buddha', an apple shaped karst rock, a rock where you had to search twelve horses and last, but not least, the '20 kuai landscape'. So what's that? On the 20 kuai banknote there's a landscape painting of one special spot on Li river which every Chinese tourist wants to have a photo of. So imagine dozens of Chinese standing on board, guessing: 'Is this the 20 kuai?" or shouting out "Now this really is the 20 kuai!". They started shouting 20 minutes before we actually reached the '20 kuai landscape' which of course was officially announced and nobody could have possibly missed it. But what a fun!

When I reached Yangshuo, the destination of the boat trip, I got myself a bike and drove out into the countryside until where the streets end and the water buffalos work together with farmers on the fields and rice paddies... Very nice views again.

At night I visited the famous show 'Impression' , directed by the Chinese director Zhang Yimou. Just imagine a stage on the water between five karst mountains and impressive light effects using mountain and water as part of the stage. Definitely not inexpensive (around 300 kuai if you really want to see something), but this show owns a "wow!", not for the minority girls singing, but for the great fishermen scenes and light effects.

Gulilin ba! 桂林吧!

2008-06-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

Right now it's low season for tourism in Guilin because it's raining nearly every day there. My colleagues had warned me to go there and when I checked the weather forecast it didn't sound promising: for the next ten days it forecasted between medium and heavy rain. So the good news first: The first and third day in and around Guilin there was fantastic sunshine, the second day was a little bit cloudy, but brought only an astounding ten minutes rain. When I got back today to Beijing, this was the first real rain I saw the whole weekend!

So where is Guilin? In the South of China - it's part of the autonomous Chinese region of Guizhou where many minorities live.

The first day I visited Reed Flute Cave (Ludi Yan) , a stalactite and stalagmite cave. Very interesting especially the colourful lightning system used and the creative interpretations of stones. I could see bears, a snowman and a christmas tree as well as a lion saying good bye to visitors. Definitely worth a visit because it's fun. The photo I attach shows a stalactite and stalagmite scene called "Shanghai" or "Beijing" or "New York" - whatever version the visitor prefers.

After that the famous Elephant Trunk Hill: a rock formation next to the river resembling an elephant drinking water. I always liked elephants because they are so peaceful animals.

Climbing Fubo Hill, another famous sight of Guilin town, I could enjoy a nice sunset over the town and the surrounding mountains which are karst mountains because of their particular form before I went on a night boat trip on the Guilin lakes. On this boat trip we also passed cormorant fishers (Kormoranfischer). The fishers there seem to be too lazy to fish themselves, but they use the birds for that task. They put a string around the cormorants' throats so that they cannot swallow the fish and then take the fish which the cormorant wanted to eat out of their mouthes again. However, it seems that there are not many real cormorant fishers anymore. When I asked, I was explained: "fishing is not allowed on the lakes here, they just are allowed to show it for tourists". Well...

First day's conclusion: "Guilin shan shui jia tian xia" / "Guilin's scenery beats that of anywhere in the world" as a Chinese saying goes, seems to be true.

Travel guides - truth or fiction?

2008-06-24T00:12:00.001-07:00

Travel guides show to be useful many times. After I heard in the news that a LP travel author had admitted he had never ever travelled to the places he wrote about, but just copied from other books and the internet, here you can find now the ultimate test: Are travel guides telling the truth? The travel guides I used where the Lonely Planet China (Vietnam edition) and Beijing Excursion Guide (Immersion Guides, a loan on the scientific behalf from Agnes :-), thanks).

Immersion Guide titles: "Daytrip"

My opinion: Already the page starts with a lie. Marco Polo Bridge (Lugou Qiao, 卢沟桥, MP Bridge) and the adjacent chinese-japanese war memorial plus town of Wanping take you two to three hours to visit. The travel time even from Northern Beijing is only one hour. Conclusion: "Time is relative" as Einstein, the famous Chinese philosopher :-), said.

Immersion Guide says: "The bridge left a big impression on Marco Polo 700 years ago. He praised it in the story of his travels as 'a very fine stone bridge, so fine indeed, that it has very few equals in the world.' " I personally like to the idea of adventurous travellers travelling around the world already back then (so to say or grandgrandgrand... fathers). Nevertheless some scientists question whether or not Marco Polo was in China, and point out several things that a European traveler probably would have mentioned, but that MP did not mention and that there is no mention of Marco Polo in Chinese accounts of the period. They say he just heard stories from other travellers and invented the whole thing about his trips.

Immersion Guide: " The MP bridge, lined with 501 distinctive stone lions offers an orgasmically precious experience for stone lion aficionados." LP Guide: "The bridge is host to 485 carved stone lions - each animal is different." I have to disappiont you because I didn't count them so I do not know how many they are. I would go for a compromise similar to Chinese bargaining: 493 lions, OK with all of you? The more interesting thing about the lions is that they are all different from each others: some lions have babies sitting on the head of the mum lion etc. And, well, aficionados - por supuesto eso lo somos, pero k kiere decir la cosa esa del orgazmo???

LP guide: "Legend has it that the lions move around during the night". Not only at nite, I can assure you, but if you want to see lions moving around you'd maybe better visit South Africa's National Parks or the zoo. Chances are higher...

Immersion Guide: "Of course, if all the stone lion excitement just warms you up for more, there are plenty of vendors to the west of the bridge ready to sell you enough stone lions to sink a suitcase." I quite like the cheeky language of the guide, but I only saw two sellers and the frogs in the swamp below the bridge were croaking (German: quacken) and singing so loud I didn't even notice somebody was trying to sell something to me.

After the Marco Polo bridge which in fact was quite interesting, I also visited the "Anti-Japanese war memorial hall" (Immersion Guide) or the "Memorial Hall of War of Resistance against Japan" (LP) where they had English language audio guides and where I learned something about the war between China and Japan (1931 until 194x). Why did they build this museum in Wanping? Because Marco Polo bridge played an important role in this war. You can look up more facts on the war with the help of search machines if you want. Maybe the information you'll find is true, maybe not. Just as with travel guides...

Out of town again - Erdoguan

2008-06-22T01:41:00.000-07:00

Today we could still feel our two hour kungfu lesson from yesterday in our feet, but nevertheless we went out of town again to the Erdoguan section of the Great Wall. Erdoguan is basically the least croweded Great Wall place I've seen so far and the least restored as well. That explains why it is not the most suitable spot to hike on the wall, but a tiny path leads through the wall from one farmer's village to the next, not too exhausting a hike (although the sun was burning down on us) with a view on the unrestored wall. The workforce of hundred thousands of workers built the wall, but the workers were not buried under the wall as is often claimed, because as experts say: "the builders of the Great Wall were no fools, they knew that a buried body under the wall would rot and leave a hole." Well, this shows that there is a lot of myths about the wall there but of course they are often just that:myths and not the truth.

An old man from the village where we started our trail showed us the way and came along. His family has lived out there for many generations and earns a living from agriculture, i.e. of peaches, plums, persimmons and other fruits. I learned from him that the sun spots (German: Sonnenflecken auf der Haut) on my arm resemble star formations in the sky (waggon etc). Well, he definitely was creative :-). Amazingly, the crops are now ripe and the villagers spread the crops on the street to dry or split it (well, if we understood it correctly, the cars can also drive over it to help split the crops, but I do not know whether this is reasonable???), so one way of the road out there you could not drive on, but it was used for agricultural work. They also spread fruits like peaches on the floor to dry it there (see last photo).

My first Kungfu lesson & shopping again

2008-06-21T07:29:00.000-07:00

For today morning I had arranged my first kungfu (功夫, Gōngfu) lesson in a park nearby. A colleague from the Netherlands had recommended me the teacher. I had wanted to take a lesson and try myself since my visit to Shaolin monastery, but now that I had a recommendation and that "Kungfu Panda" starts in the movies, it just seemed the right time to have a try. Agnes and her brother Jakob joined the lesson. We tried three different styles of Chinese kungfu art: Shaolin style (many kicks and moves, mainly concentrating on body flexibilty), another style mainly concentrating on self defense and for the 'cool down' we did Tai Qi, which is much more slowly, less demanding and smoother. I personnaly liked Shaolin style the most. By the way, did you know that China tried to establish modern Wushu/ modern Chinese martial art, which is yet another style, as a discipline in the Olympics? This attempt was not supported by the Olympic Committee, so now there is no such discipline.

In the afternoon after a good shower we visited Panjiayuan Antique market - the "mother of all Beijing antique markets". Well, guess what you rarely ever find there? Yeah, right, real antiques. For non-experts like me it's hard to distinguish between old and new, but the stroll around the market was quite nice and we found some unusual stalls selling old phones or suitcases, so it was worth the visit.

sugar water medicine at the tailor's

2008-06-19T06:05:00.001-07:00

What happened this week? At work I was busy from Monday to Wednesday because we had an external audit. Seems that it went very well.
Apart from that, Agnes brother Jakob who's on a visit needed a new suit so we went to "my" tailor shop. Hidden in the basement of a Chinese style apartment house nobody would ever find this tailor by coincidence, but only based on recommendation (in my case from a Taiwanese colleague). However, they are always quite busy.
The owner is a woman in her late 40s or early 50s, maybe 1.5 m or 1.6 m tall, from Shanghai and very nice! She talks in quick Chinese to all her clients, evento Agnes brother who doesn't understand Chinese yet. Well, the effort she does is what matters. She is just so attentive and helpful. Suddenly Agnes felt a little bit weak, so our tailor immediately knew the medicine for that: "tang shui" - sugar water! Agnes drank it out of a small cup and she soon felt a little bit better. Our order showed our appreciaton:
one suit, a blouse, three trousers, five skirts. We can't complain about the prices neither. Don't want to make you envious, just for you to have an idea: one pair of trousers: 100 kuai, a skirt: 100 kuai (100 kuai is equivalent to 10 EUR).

Rural escape - Cuandixia

2008-06-15T04:48:00.000-07:00

Today we (Agnes, Claudia, Ines, Jakob and me) drove out of Beijing to Cuandixia. I'd like to quote: "Nestled in a valley 90 km west of Beijing and overlooked by towering peaks is Cuandixia, a gorgeous cluster of historic courtyard homes and old-world charm. The backdrop is lovely: terraced orchards and fields, with ancient houses and alleyways rising up the hillside." We climbed up the hill opposite the town and enjoyed the fantastic view. Then we enjoyed a country meal in one of the house's courtyards, which was simple but good. After lunch a walk to the temple and through town (lanes decorated with dried corn hanging on the houses) gave us more impression about this "lovely" Ming village. When we saw a swing in the form of a bucket (Schaufel eines Baggers), we didn't want to restrict the child in us and went on it :-).

Beijing everyday news

2008-06-13T22:35:00.000-07:00

Olympia is approaching very fast. Now Beijing municipality placed new traffic signs with indications to the Olympic venues and places. Well, the sign "Olympic Village" is quite clear and easy to understand. But what place does the "IPC/MPC" sign lead to? "Idiot Parking Centre" "Maniac Parking Center"? The best guess so far goes for "International Business Center / Media Press Center", because that's what many people here wish the Olympics are going to be: good business and positive media coverage.
After weeks of heat, yesterday evening and night we had thunder and lightning in Beijing. Quite heavy to be honest and also some rain. Today it's still raining and the air is fresher which of course I appreciate. Wishing you a nice weekend!

And into the desert!

2008-06-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

Wow! Amazing! Great! Awesome! - I think these were the most-used words during the last two days in the desert. Some of the photos taken are so much kitch that nobody would believe they are real (if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes...).

Already the way to our desert (called Alashan Desert, the fourth biggest desert in China, part of the Gobi desert) was so much fun! Of course driving through the sand dunes we had to go on special means of transport. In our case a military truck. And then up and down, ahhhhhhh!, yeah!, a feeling like in a rollercoaster, but even better. Traffic signs in the middle of nowhere, huge sand dunes, panoramic desert views and a little bit hurting bum later we arrived in our hotel in the desert at a lake (called Moon Lake). The mosquitos were welcoming us, but not only they, but also we had some nice dinner and minority dancing & singing.

In the morning we went on a camel ride. Don't think camels are nice animals, at least mine was naughty and some others as well. The camel ride through the sand dunes to a nomad family's house was offering amazing views, but I was mainly concentrating on trying not to fall down the camel and didn't dare to use the camera too often. Back at the hotel, I did a go kart ride in the sand and then it was already time to go back by military truck. The way back was much more challenging to the trucks and in some cases, we needed three tries to succeed to drive up a sand dune...

Alashan desert was a unique experience. Why? Not touristy. A real desert with amazing sand dunes. And last but not least the military truck was just so much fun!

Rock paintings around the world unite!

2008-06-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

On our second day in Ningxia new adventures were waiting for us. In the Helanshan (Mount Helan), a very penurious mountain, we visited rock paintings which are over 2000 years in age. Back then the people who lived there painted animals, humans and human masks into the mountain caves. Amazing are the analogies in world history: human beings painted quite similar rock paintings in America, Europe and Asia. That's astonishing given the distances between the different places!Back then human beings used to be nomads, but that's just too far a way to walk...

Another highlight of the day were the Xixia Tombs. Ming and Qing Tombs in Beijing are not the slightest comparison. The Xixia Tombs just look like a huge pile of stones. The emperor of a time when China was split into different kingdoms is said to be burried there.

Chinese Grand Canyon and Chinese Winnetou

2008-06-09T06:39:00.000-07:00

Why go to Ningxia? In most travel guides you don't even find this province. It's one of the smallest, newest and poorest provinces of China. One third of the population belong to the Hui minority (yes, they are really called 'Hui') who are muslims. The silk road also used to go through Ningxia.

Ningxia was most surprising to me. They also have the Great Wall there, but it's earthern there and doesn't look like it could last for more than 20 years, but well, they built it in the Ming dynasty and it's still there. This Great Wall was just so different from the Beijing Great Wall! And the most astonishing there is the surrounding nature... they even have a 'Grand Canyon' there and the atmosphere feels like any second there could be Lucky Luke coming around the corner singing a cowboy song. Or Winnetou. Wild Wild West.

Our hotel was in the old town (our Chinese guide saying that, but old to her means from the 1980s :-)). Our driver was a Hui whom our guide considered to be 'very handsome' as she said. Just in case they ever come together and get married, she as a Han Chinese would need to convert to Hui and their religion and they would fall under the exeption of the birth control law. In China there's a law that families normally are only allowed to have one child; exeptions i.a. are minorities which are allowed to have two children per family.

Have a look at the photos to have an impression yourself...

Mountainyoga in the Western mountains

2008-06-01T02:33:00.000-07:00

After the long travel on Wednesday I decided to spend a quiet, relaxing weekend with a little bit of sport. So when I had read an article about http://www.mountainyoga.cn/ who offer weekend yoga retreats in the Western mountains of Beijing ("Xishan"), I had spontaneously registered.

It worked out perfectly. Not only was the weather a mere pleasure, also the place (an old buddhist temple in the Western mountains which is not being used as a religious place any more) was great. Compared to the Fragrant Hill (Xiangshan), the Western mountains offer especially one thing more: a terrific mountain panorama.

We did not only yoga, but also climbed a mountain in order to enjoy the view. Up the hill there were hardly any tourists and from the pavillion we could see as far as the Beijing skyline. We went down on another side of the mountain, so we had to walk back to the temple on a railway track. which was also being used as a hiking track. Well, maybe you also still remember your parents telling you not to play or walk on a railway track. There it was quite different: plenty of people were walking the railway track and when the train came, you just went to the side and waited until it had passed. Just have a look at the photo to have an impression yourself (of course the obligatory umbrella to protect the skin from the sun was also frequently to be found among Chinese women hikers...).

Since I have done hot yoga for the first time I really like yoga! It even stabilises my back where I had some problems at the end of last year. This weekend we did many yoga styles - most of them I liked and I would call sport.

But we also did 'Yoga Nidra': "Yoga-Nidra ("Yoga sleep"), is an expression widely used to denote the highest state of consciousness. Although yoga nidra means yogic sleep, it is actually a wakeful state of deep introversion. ." Imagine you lying on the floor with a blanket over your body. A voice tells you to find a comfortable position, to relax all parts of your body, to not fall asleep, to really not fall asleep, to totally relax, to relax your fingers, to not fall asleep, to really not fall asleep etc. Of course it's a little bit more than that, but to be honest everything my body wanted was to fall asleep in order not to have to listen to the monotoneous voice. Well, now I at least know which yoga style I don't like...

Foreign adventures :-)

2008-05-29T04:53:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent with my boyfriend in Germany. He had a birthday party with barbecue which was very nice (also thanks to the nice weather). We went swimming, to the cinema, visited Weissenburg (known for its Roman history) and the Wuelzburg (a castle where Charles de Gaulle was kept as prisoner long ago) and enjoyed the good German asparagus. I also bought some new shoes - due to my shoe seize it's hard to find shoes in China.

Sunday and Chinese poems

2008-05-18T03:55:00.000-07:00

No Sunday adventures to tell you. After having been two weeks on the road, I just relaxed.

I also admired a new present from a Chinese person I know, a mobile phone bag in the form of a dog (see photo). Well, isn't it lovely, especially together with my Chinese mobile which my colleagues decorated with pink shamrocks (German: Kleeblatt)!

Apart from that I want to write a little bit about Chinese poetry. Given the fact that China had a troublesome history in the past, also the poems reflect that. If you are interested I would just like to give you one example called 'Crossing the Han river':

' No news, no letters - all winter, all spring -
Beyond the mountains
With every homeward step more timid still

I dare not even inquire of passerby'

The context of the poem is interesting as well: ' Song Zhiwen, the author of the poem, was known as a unsavoury character who pandered to the empress Wu Zhao's lover Zhang Yibi, fell from power along with Zhang, and was eventually found guilty opf accepting bribes and executed. He really had good reason to fear returning home from exile...'

Saturday in Tianjin

2008-05-17T06:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday our project team had a workshop in Tianjin (approximately two hours by car from Beijing), so I decided to stay there overnight and visit the city of Tianjin on Saturday.

Wherever I went in Tianjin there was something common: road works and construction works were going on. Maybe this is also due to the Olympics (some events will take place in Tianjin). Old hutongs are being demolished and neat houses built instead, old colonial houses are being renovated, roads are being built.

Interesting parts of Tianjin history:

1. In 1856 Chinese soldiers went on board of the "The Arrow", a Chinese-owned ship flying under the British flag because the ship was suspected of piracy, smuggling and of being engaged in opium trade. The Chinese imprisoned 12 men. In response the British and French sent gunboats to capture a fortification near Tianjin. At the end of the first part of the so-called Second Opium War, the Chinese had to sign the Treaty of Tianjin, which opened Tianjin to foreign trade. Many foreigners settled in (British, French, Italians, Germans, Russians etc) and each of these nationalities established a concession with own school, prison and hospitals.

2. In 1870 the Chinese locals attacked an orphanage managed by the French and kidnapped the nuns working there because they had heard that the children were being eaten. They had misunderstood the bible's concept of the sacraments and the body and blood of Jesus.

Still today many old colonial houses in English, French, Russian and other styles can be seen in the streets of Tianjin. Some of them have been renovated, others are abandoned and have a degenerate charm about them.

Another sights I visited were the 'Ancient Culture Street' and the 'Old Town' around Tianjins Bell Tower. This was really disappointing! The 'AAAA' rated 'first class Chinese tourist place' didn't convince me at all. Why? Well, neither the ancient culture street nor the old town were old. All the houses had been recently built, just in a somewhat old style, and all of them house tourist shops. If you are the last day in China and need a souvenir, this is maybe just the place to go to. A look behind the facades sometimes showed the real Chinese backstreets of Tianjin, but most of these have already been demolished.

Shanghai, trains, earthquake

2008-05-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

" Arriving passengers, please forward door alight!" - that's one of the signs with instructions on Chinese trains. If you don't know what that means there is still luckily the Chinese text on the sign which says "Arriving passengers please use the door in front of the waggon to exit the train."

Another funny translation on Chinese trains is the name of the town 'Guiyang". That's really a town name and on the English sign it probably should just say 'Guiyang'. However, the Chinese word 'gui' also means 'expensive' and 'yang' means 'sun' that's why the Chinese railway company proudly presents trains going to the Expensive Sun. Aha.

But originally I shortly wanted to write about last Sunday which I spent in Shanghai. On this very day I visited the Shanghai museum with a lot of old Chinese landscape paintings, sculptures and stamps and the Jade Budha Temple (Yufo Si). Yufo Si is still a very active temple with crowds of people going there to pray. Its Jade Buddha is wellknown and it says that it was brought to China from Birma. After a stroll on the bund (under the deep blue sky!) I took my parents out for dinner because it was the last day we could meet in China before their return to Germany.

Apart from that, on Monday we were happy enough not to notice anything of the big earthquake in China. We were at a company in Pudong / Shanghai holding a workshop and not even the ground did shake. Unfortunately, in other regions of China many people died or were injured. I guess you already read that in more details in the newspaper. Luckily it at least seems that all the people I know here are OK.

Paradise on earth?

2008-05-11T00:48:00.000-07:00

In Chinese there is a saying: "There is paradise in heaven while on earth there is Suzhou and Hangzhou."
I had arrived in Shanghai last Sunday and had held a workshop with different people every day. The workshops still go on next week in this part of China which is why I staid in Shanghai over the weekend.
On Saturday I decided to go to Suzhou by train. Going by train in Shanghai is like going on a plane in Europe. You are not allowed to enter the station without a train ticket (tickets are usually sold next to the station) and only after a security check. Then you have to enter a waiting hall and when the loudspeakers announce that the check-in starts all passengers rush on the platform where the train is already waiting.
Suzhou was a real nice town. Rather small and easily accessible, it offered nice canals where you could take boat tours (the "gondoliere" even sang Chinese songs), Chinese landscape gardens (although unsurprisingly the most wellknown ones were damn crowded and not that good to visit, some small gardens were a positive surprise, e.g. the "Master-of-Nets Garden"), pagodas and an old town you could stroll around. I especially liked the old town (authentic) where children played in the streets, women washed their clothes in the canal and old men drank tea. Of course, living there is no easy life without the normal modern commodities. Washing clothes in the canals/rivers might look romantic to people from Western cities, but I also considered how dirty the water was and that it was real handwork done by women and female children only...
When I came back from Suzhou, I just passed the hotel where my parents were supposed to arrive on Saturday and wanted to leave them a message where and when we could meet, but when I entered the lobby, guess who walked down the stairs?
My parents! Their travel tour was doing a "Shanghai by night" tour and I decided to join. We visited the current tallest building of Shanghai (Jin Mao tower, 88 storeys) and went on top with the elevators. There we enjoyed the view over the Bund (the colonial area) and the TV tower (Oriental Pearl Tower). Next to Jin Mao tower they currently build a slightly taller building (nicknamed "bottle opener" because of its form), but the tallest inhabited structure of the world will still be the "101" in Taipei / Taiwan until the moment when the sheiks in Dubai will have finished their even taller building (probably 2009).
Many more night sights later (Bund, Nanjing Lu, Renmin Square with coloured fountain) the tour was finished.

Smog, heavy rain and other visits

2008-05-03T06:27:00.000-07:00

Yesteray my parents arrived in Beijing. I showed them around a bit, but because of the May holidays Tianmen was crowded like never before. Just too many people! The heavy smog over the town disapeared today with heavy rain, thunder and lightning. So we went shopping and visited the architectural museum (well worth visiting with a miniature of Beijing in 1949 and more) instead of walking around in the rain.
In the afternoon when I went back to the hotel I had a very talkative taxi driver who while driving me around helped his daughter to move flat. So we drove to her old home first, loaded her bike and other belongings and took them with us. The taxi driver also asked me to talk to her on the phone to practice her English. That was fun! Apart from that he didn't believe me that the two persons with me in the cab had been my mum and dad. He told me they just looked too young... Well, mum and dad, you could be proud to hear that.

1st May holdiay excursion

2008-05-01T02:49:00.000-07:00

In China on the 1st and 2nd of May we don't have to work because of national holiday. To be honest, nobody I asked knew why these two days are off apart from the fact that of course the 1st of May is workers' day.

We seized the opportunity to visit Hongluo si (Red conch temple) which used to be the centre of Northern Chinese buddhism. Now it is a wide area featuring some temples, gardens, a mountain, a 500 Arhat forest and an alpine slide (German: Sommerrodelbahn). Especially the last two sights were great. The 500 Arhat forest were five hundred statues of Buddha disciples standing in the forest wearing red capes. The alpine slide was not to be used individually, but in groups of five and a professional "alpine slider" (I don't know the official name of this profession :-)) sitting in the first "wagon" was the only one who could step on the brakes. It was just crazy how quickly our professional "alpine slider" drove us down the hill. What a fun!

Well, the transport there (over 2 hours standing in the bus because at 7am!!! already no seat was available) was less fun and the "3 star toilets" couldn't convince us neither. Yes, there is a star rating system for Chinese toilets, not only for hotels. (check http://www.thebeijingguide.com/toilets/chinese_toilets.html for some information on this system and on Chinese toilets in general if you're interested).

To have an impression of our excursion I attach some photos.

Water splashing festival and shopping maniacs

2008-04-27T06:31:00.000-07:00

Today we (being Agnes and me) saw a water splashing festival which is normally held by the Dai minority in Yunnan, in Southern China. The festival is described as follows:

"The climax of the water-splashing activity is when the people of the different ethnic groups attending the festival splash water upon each other, using basins and buckets. Although all the people are soaked to the skin, all participants are happy."

Well, sounds like fun! Of course Yunnan is not Beijing, but in the Chinese Ethic Culture Park where they try to give you a feeling about traditions of Chinese minorities they had a performance of water splashing. Given the fact that it was a damn hot day it was hard to resist to participate.

The second part of the park also included Uygur, Kazak and Uzbek minorities which live in the Chinese North-West. Worth to remember: China has 56 minorities all over the country. If you're further interested in them / their traditions you can also check the following link: http://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/nationality/56list.htm

Afterwards we went shopping. Never believe people who say: "I don't like shopping." Would people who don't like shopping buy around 12 pieces of clothes in a Decathlon shop (outdoor / sports brand)? But I can't complain because I myself also got some practical clothes at a good price...

Beijing bicyle and Behai park

2008-04-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

Beijing is a relatively bicyle-friendly city. There usually is a seperate road for bikes where you can drive quite independently from the cars. However, at the crossroads you have to pay high attention and it's beneficial if you are used to Beijing traffic rules already, e.g. you should know that a green traffic light doesn't necessarily mean that you can go on. But as this was my third bike trip, I felt quite confident already...

On my way to town I drove past Italy, Germany, Russia and more countries, well, at least the embassies of these countries which are to be found in Beijing's embassy quarter called Sanlitun.

On the way to the city centre I also peeped at the small lanes with 'siheyuans' (typical Beijing style houses) where the daily life of the people who live there is going on. After having passed the drum and bell tower and cyled along the banks of Houhai (the upper lake), I reached my goal of today: Beihai park (the nortern lake park). I was quite surprised that including my detours the whole trip had lasted only one hour and this with a bike that has no gear shift (German: keine Gangschaltung).

Beihai park is a former imperial garden in the center of Beijing next to the Forbidden City. I love visiting Beijing parks on the weekend! People dance, sing, just walk around, birds sing and old men take their birds in cages out for a walk (see the photo)... Beihai additionally offers some sights like a white pagoda, the nine dragon wall and temples. I also learned that it's only 103 days until the Beijing Olympics start (well, you can't miss that, they have countdown boards everywhere in town). After my visit to the park I just felt so relaxed!

on the fastest train in the world and more - Shanghai adventures

2008-04-22T08:22:00.001-07:00

My Shanghai adventures were:
- driving with the Maglev, the first magnetic levitation train (German: Magnetschwebebahn) in the world from the city of Shanghai to Pudong airpirt. Wow, not bad, we reached 430 km/h. In the curves this felt quite strange, but an interesting experience.

- visiting Yuyuan garden, a small garden hidden between busy tourist streets on the one side of the garden and old typical small alleys with foodstalls on the street on the other side of the garden.

- cruising on the Huangpu river from where you can see the Bund ('waitan') which basically consists of old colonial style buildings mostly in British style. The British founded the city of Shanghai as a trade port (of mainly opium, silk and tea) in 1842 - beforehand just some local fishermen had lived there. On the other bank of the river you can see the district of Pudong -the business and financial district of Shanghai. However, its skyline and skyscrapers cannot be compared to the impressive skyline of Hongkong which beats Shanghai by far when it comes to that.

My impression of Shanghai in a nutshell: a relatively modern business town worth visiting, but don't expect the big surprise. Still I cannot agree the statement of many people that Shanghai is not a Chinese city at all from the look & feel. Despite the fact that every tenth person you meet on the street / in the subway is a stranger, it still feels like China, because of the people, the buildings etc.

Hangzhou, my new grandma friends, tea plants and more

2008-04-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

"The shimmering ripples delight the eye on sunny days,

The dim hills present a rare view in rainy haze.
West Lake compares to Xi Zi the beauty at her best:

She is gorgeous, richly clothed or plainly dressed."

(the author compared the lake to legendary Chinese ancient legendary beauty named Xi Zi)

This is what an author wrote about the West Lake in Hangzhou, which is by far the most wellknown sight of the city. The lake is surrounded by nice parks, temples, pagodas and bridges and inspired many authors and painters ever since.

I didn't go there on my own, but joined a Chinese one-day travel group from Shanghai. This was a totally new experience because the explanations were in Chinese only and the other participants were all Chinese. On the trip I made friends with some old Chinese ladies and on all our cameras together there probably are more than 100 photos of our group now. They were very attentive and made sure I didn't get lost (well, not that there was much of a chance anyway...). The second highlight after our boat trip on the West Lake were the fields with plenty of green tea plants. The Hangzhou area is known for it's extensive tea production.

Wuzhen, one of the Chinese 'little Venices'

2008-04-22T07:44:00.000-07:00

Because I had to go on a business trip to Shanghai, I extended the trip in order to do some sightseeing in Shanghai, Wuzhen and Hangzhou.

My first destination was Wuzhen. Wuzhen is a very Chinese watertown, one of the six little watertowns in this region which are also referred to as 'little Venice'. A colleague-friend of mine had recommended me to go to Wuzhen instead of another more famous watertown because she said that "it is not that crowded". Well, I don't want to know how much more crowded the other watertowns must be! Tons of Chinese tourists were strolling through the town, but I still had the impression that the town is not a tourist scene only because many old people were living in the antique wooden houses by the water.

Well, water was another issue. It was raining cats and dogs on that day. Some new acquaintances I made in Wuzhen, two Chinese students, convinced me, however, that a watertown wouldn't be perfect without water coming from above as well and, as they put it, "the rain creates a very special atmosphere." Yepp, I couldn't express it better myself :-).

K.O. after karaoke

2008-04-17T05:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday after work a nice colleague had invited four other colleagues (including me) of our office to do karaoke (karaoke is a Japanese word literally meaning 'empty orchestra'). When we reached the so-called 'KTV' place at 6 pm I was astonished how crowded this place was on a normal week day. Karaoke really is a favorite spare time activity of many Chinese. We had a private room for the five of us and a big dinner buffet for all the KTV rooms.

Then we sang ... and sang ... and sang. I was astonished how good the others could sing! We had a lot of fun singing the latest Chinese love songs and rap songs. If you want to know what Chinese contemporary music sounds like you can try to search for 'zhong guo hua' in the internet and listen to the music video. Beforehand I had prepared some Chinese songs and although I had forgotten some parts I managed quite well. Well, I also was quite surprised about some Chinese songs which were cover versions of European / American songs, e.g. 'Dragosta sin te': "madahu, madahaha" was the same, the rest of the song seems to have been a loose translation.

Summer in Beijing, literary garden and traditional kites

2008-04-12T21:51:00.000-07:00

24 degree celsius, sun, blue sky! Sitting next to a fountain, watching children play with the water and drinking a Frappuccino felt just like I could be anywhere Mediterranean, but not in China.

This weekend feels most relaxed, probably also due to the weather.

Yesterday Agnes and me went strolling through a Chinese landscape garden - 'Daguanyuan' at the other end of Beijing. We wondered why the entrance was relatively high (40 Yuan, approx. 3,80 EUR), but as we had left our guide books at home we just enjoyed the garden with its stone formations, its lake, the beautiful blossoming flowers. At home I then read that the garden was was built as a replica of one of the most famous Chinese books, the 18th century 'Dream of the Red Mansions' by Cao Xueqin. Well, shall try to buy and read the book now that I know how important it is in Chinese literary history. At night, after having had dinner in a Vegetarian hutong restaurant with own house altar (Bodhi-Sake) we decided to walk a bit and walked till Tianmen. Tianmen square by night is also worth visiting.

Today I visited Sunhe kite market, quite out of town. Spring is kite season (kite = German: Flugdrachen) in China: just look up into the sky and you'll see extraordinary kites flyiing in many places; not just children fly them, but mainly old men. Kites are something very Chinese: the first kite was invented in China approximately 2300 years ago. They were first used for military purposes to deliver messages or check the direction of the wind. Later on making kites became a Chinese handicraft and flying kites a popular spare time activity. Sunhe market sold anything from vegetables, meat, Xian terracotta soldiers duplicates, clothes to kites. The kites themselves were available in many forms: dragon, butterfly, batman, Mickey Mouse, Beijing opera themes etc. Although I had planned to buy nothing, I could not resist and bargained some decorative kites.

A night with monks and a sacred mountain

2008-04-07T03:46:00.000-07:00

After the visit to the Dafo at Leshan we drove by bus to Emei shan (Mount Emei) village where we planned to stay over night. Because it was too late to drive to far inside the mountains, we chose Baoguo Si (Baoguo monastery) as our accomodation.

In the morning the bell woke us at 4:35 am. Well, being a buddhist monk or nun must be hard! They get up that early every day! We wanted to see the sunrise over the mountain, but the aurora unfortunately appeared opposite the mountain and we couldn't see the sun rise at all. Too misty! But nevertheless it was worth getting up that early, enjoying the fresh air, hearing roosters and birds greeting the early morning and the monks processing for their morning prayer (reciting the "amitabha sutra" - "Ēmítuó jīng" and walking around in a spiritual procession. The sutra describes what one must do to be reborn in the so-called Western Pure Land).

Two hours on a narrow mountain road brought us to the place where we wanted to start our hike on Mount Emei. Well, Mount Emei is.... yes, again, ... UNESCO world heritage and one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains in China.

The hike itself was nice, but not what you'd usually expect from hiking. I'd rather call our activity "ultimate stair climbing" because the way up the hill was fully covered with concrete. Still we had fun watching wild apes sitting around in the trees and making friends with our Chinese fellow hikers. A group of Chinese engineering students asked us shyly whether we really were Russian - they had heard this rumour going around the other Chinese hikers :-). We also got to know two nice Chinese students of German language and decided to walk together for some time. We met again some of the Chinese we had seen at Leshan the day before and our photo is definitely on more than ten Chinese cameras now.

Up on the mountain peak a surprise awaited us. No rain or bad view as other travellers had warned us we would most probably encounter. Beaming sunlight and a wonderful landscape! A golden statue of elephants with a buddha on it - we had reached the golden peak! I have no words to describe the unique landscape with the buddha clouds (as a certain form of clouds is called there). 美妙! Just have a look at the photos to have an impression yourself!

The Sunday we spent back in Chengdu. Chengdu has a big Mao statue in the city centre and a lively tea house atmosphere. Mao was once highly esteemed by the Chinese, but with e.g. the cultural revolution where a lot of Chinese cultural heritage was destroyed and other less brilliant ideas he step by step destroyeed this admiration.If you want to know more about chairman Mao I can recommend the German webpage: http://www.planet-wissen.de/pw/Artikel,,,,,,,077B5724A05F132FE0440003BA5E08D7,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.html

We visited much more before our plane took us back to Beijing (e.g. Manjushri monastery, a very active religious place with a lake full of turtles and a nice vegetarian restaurant), but I shall finish here with my blog entry of this 4-day-trip....

Tal, taller... the tallest. Visiting Leshan Buddha

2008-04-07T03:06:00.000-07:00

Friday morning we left Chengdu early for Leshan. Leshan is a relaxes middle sized town with one main attraction that draws the attention of millions of (mainly Chinese) visitors... and us. Again UNESCO world heritage, again a record: The "Dafo" of Leshan is the tallest stone buddha statue in the world.

The story of its construction is an interesting one:

"Construction was started in 713 AD, led by a Chinese monk who hoped that the Buddha would calm the turbulent waters that plagued the surrounding town with frequent inundations / floods. When funding for the project was threatened, he is said to have gouged out his own eyes to show his piety and sincerity. Construction was completed by his disciples ninety years later. Apparently the massive construction resulted in so much stone being removed from the cliff face and deposited into the river below that the currents were indeed altered by the statue, stopping the frequent inundations."

Leshan Dafo is 71 m high with 7 m long ears and 1.6 m long toe nails. Really impressive! Because of its location on the bank of the river, we chose to go on a boat trip to see the full buddha from the water first. Then we decided to approach the buddha, drove there by rickshaw (the most common transport option in Leshan) and climbed down from his head to his feet to enjoy the different perspectives. Well, we were not the only ones doing that given the fact it was a national Chinese holiday.... Masses of Chinese climbed down and up with us making the whole experience a crowded one.

Ohhh! Ahhh! Cute panda bears (Sichuan adventure part 1)

2008-04-06T07:21:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was a public holiday (tomb sweeping day, something similar to the German "Allerheiligen") so Claudia and me hit the road again. This time to Chengdu in Sichuan which is famous for spicy food as well as for the national animal of the Chinese - the Giant Panda.

The journey was self organised again which is possible due to our in the meantime luckily good basic Chinese. On the first day we visited the Panda Breeding Station in Chengdu. Pandas (giant panda 大熊猫 da xiong mao - literally translated "big bear cat" are really cute animals and they are vegetarians.

"Giant Pandas are easily recognized by its large, distinctive black patches around the eyes, over the ears, and across its round body. The panda has a diet which is 99% bamboo. Giant Pandas live in a few mountain ranges in central China, in Sichuan, Shanxi. They are an endangered species."

Many "ohhh"s and "ahhh"s later we had seen many pandas - not only giant pandas, but also red pandas (which look a little bit like badgers - "Dachs"). And the luck was with us again - just as we had finished looking at the cute little panda youngsters we noticed that food was being delivered to them and staid. During the day, pandas often just relax, but when it's food time they are very active. The youngsters even got milk to drink. They stood up on their feet to reach the milk bottles and as soon as they had them they fell backwards on the grass again where they drank it in a relaxed lying position. What a fun to watch the panda youngsters drop in a row! They pandas also tried to steal foot from each other - one semi-adult panda used his hands to hold them in front of another panda's eyes so he couldn't see anymore and at the same time stole his piece of bamboo.

At night we visited a Sichuan Opera show. This is famous for face changing:

"Performers wear brightly colored costumes and move to quick, dramatic music. Their faces are vividly colored, for they are wearing masks. However, within a fraction of a second, their masks' change — revealing completely new and vibrant visages." We didnt't manage to reveal the secret of how they change the masks but along with acrobatics, shadow images show,Chinese music and much more we really enjoyed the show.
I'm going to tell you tomorrow about our adventure during the other three days...

Lazy Sunday

2008-03-30T02:05:00.000-07:00

Hey, this was really a lazy day. I did... hmmm... nearly nothing. Sleeping in, relaxing, talking to my boyfriend on skype, learning a little bit of Chinese, listening to music.

So today I want to tell you about my Beijing everyday life. My apartment in Beijing is in an international condominium with a small garden including a children's playground and an indoor swimming pool although the pool unfortunately has no nice meditterean atmosphere. My apartment has two rooms, bath room and kitchen, fully equipped - or more than fully equipeed as I can dispose of two Chinse DVD players, but because instruction and buttons on the DVD are in Chinese only, I was happy that I managed one of them and didn't try the second one yet.

Drinking water from the tub is not advisable in Beijing so I also own a water dispenser (German: Wasserspender) with hot and cold water. People here in Beijing drink a lot of hot water (no, not tea, but plain hot water), I first had to get used to it and now even like drinking "开水/kaishui".
At work there are also water dispensers all over the offices and my most common daily drink is really kaishui there as well.

Work hours are more reglemented than in Germany. Everybody has to be in office from 8:30 am to 5:15 pm in our joint venture. Many companies have company busses that collect employees before work and bring them home after work, but ours doesn't. For me it was a matter of getting used to starting work "so late" because in Germany I had nearly always started the workday at 7:30 am and it also was a matter of getting used to fixed, non-flexible working times. Of course employees and especially bosses work overtime, but if a normal employee has to work overtime, he will have to formally apply for overtime beforehand.

For lunch we often go to Chinese restaurants or some foodstand at the local market - some with more basic hygience, some with high hygience, but all serve yummie food of some kind. On the weekends for dinner I like to go to Vegetarian restaurants because I can eat everything there without bothering about the ingredients. "Pure Lotus" is a Vegetarian restaurant owned by monks with an excellent dining atmosphere, but for Beijing relatively high prices. Another favorite veggie restaurant is "Lily Vegetarian" which has a friendly family style atmosphere and also offers the most astonishing vegetable dishes and meat / fish imitations made from beancurd / doufu / tofu. China has many Vegetarian restaurants because one interpretation of buddhism doesn't allow monks to eat animals, garlic or onions.

Meeting Beijing underground world

2008-03-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

Today Agnes and me went in search for Beijing underground world. Not the world of gangsters, people bribing, dealing drugs or killing, but the underground tunnels and air raid shelters of Beijing. In fact, Beijing underneath is like an "emmentaler" cheese. In the underground tunnels you can walk to nearly all of Beijing (Mao mausoleum, summer palace, even until Tianjin or Badaling Great Wall).

Mao let them be built between 1969 and 1970 because he had just broken up with Russia (or Russia broken up with him) and feared attacks. The tunnels and shelters were designed to fit more than 300,000 people inside and offered extensive facilities such as hospitals, weapon arsenals, libraries and even a mushroom cultivation farm (because many Chinese love to eat mushrooms of all kinds). In the tunnel there still are many Mao posters and advertisements to invite people to join the Chinese army.

Having escaped the underworld, we also strolled through Dashalan and Liulichang, two old Beijing shopping streets. Dashalan was rather unpleasant - many muddy puddles (it had rained yesterday) and a lot of construction works going on in the former hutong area. Some nice curiosity shops were to be found in both streets. A Chinese music instrument shop, a Chinese medicine pharmacy (offering the most weird things as medicine at incrediblly high prices), antiques shops with Buddhas and Mahjong games as well as Chinese seal shops. I could not resist it... I now am the proud owner of a Chinese seal supposedly with an abbreviation of my name on it (but, hey you never know with those seldom Chinese signs...) and carved in the form of a rooster (my Chinese astrologic sign). If you want to see a similar seal and read some background information try the following link (in German language):

http://markusundtinka.de/seiten/themen/siegel/chineseseals.html

Wishing you a nice Sunday.

Fujian county and Xiamen -Easter trip

2008-03-25T04:58:00.000-07:00

Easter holiday

Xiamen and Fujian county are in Southern China - on the Chinese mainland just opposite Taiwan island. We (being Claudia and me) spent four days there over the Easter weekend.

The trip was not planned to be an Easter trip (also given the fact that Chinese do not celebrate Easter), but I just still had two leave days from last year which I hadn't used before and my company's rules say I have to use them until the end of March. If that's not a good reason to be on the road again :-)!

Xiamen is a 2.5 hour trip from Beijing by plane and it takes much longer by train, that's why we obviously chose to go by plane.

When we arrived at Beijing airport, a surprise awaited us. Due to the fact that earlier in the week some Chinese seperationalists had tried to flyjack a plane, security measures had been increased significantly. Instead of the usual ten minutes needed to go through security check, it took us over an hour. But luckily we had arrived at the airport early, so we made it on time for departure

Hakka /tulou

From the airport our private driver drove us to tulou villages. The road was getting ever narrower and ever bumpier- we first passed Xiamen industrial area (wood production etc), then banana palm trees (I've never seen that many banana palm trees in one place before in my life), hills, a mountain river, rice paddy fields. The landscape was impressive!

After 3.5 hours we arrived in Hongkeng, where the Chinese minority /nationality of the Hakka / Tulou live. The village was a real farmers village and had some unique atmosphere to it:

farmers working on the rice paddies cultivating rice, hens and roosters walking around freely, old inhabitants sitting under the old village tree playing games, school children walking home from their afternoon class, a woman praying with red candlesticks to a tree -live is simple there, but for a visitor coming from a big city like Beijing with poluted air it's a nice experience.

The Hakka are known for their 'tu lou', their Earthern buildings which have the following characteristics:

- three to six floors high

- round or square

- built from earth, sand and wood (to stabilise the building)

- with an inner courtyard

- on the lower floors there is only one big door and no windows. This is because in this remote mountainary area there used to live many thieves and robbers who used to attack the farmers. In order to protect themselves they build those big earthern buildings with only one entrance on the lower floors.

Tulous are usually inhabited by more than hundred people, each one of the inhabitants having a small room only, the kitchen being in the inner courtyard and the shared toilets with basic shower facility outside the tulou.
Overnight we staid in one of the tulous, very basic accomodation, but our hosts were most accomodating. Apart from us mainly Chinese visitors staid in the hostel. As evening program a firework and campfire were organised. When the Chinese started to dance a group dance around the campfire (tip left, tip right, jump forward, backward, then thrice forward), I joined! What a fun!

More tulous

After a good night's sleep we visited even more tulous of different kinds. A waterbuffalo greeted on us walking around in the beautiful scenery and many old tulou people whispered "hen gao" "zhen gao" (very tall!) when they saw me because people in Fuijan province tend to be shorter than in Beijing and also because there were not many other foreign visitors.

On the way back to Xiamen the driver obviously wanted to achieve a new world record for the fastest driving, but luckily he managed his metier...

Xiamen

In Xiamen we staid in Xiamen International Youth Hostel in the university district. Many young people around there!

Xiamen was visited by foreigners early in its history. Portuguese, British, French and Dutch - they all tried to establish Xiamen as their trade port early in Xiamen history. Not all of them succeeded. Due to its colonial history Xiamen offers an interesting mixture of Western and Chinese elements.

Gu Lang Yu is a small island with mediterrean houses, small alleys and charm. It is said to have the highest piano density of China. We went there by ferry, but by mistake we didn't get on the direct ferry, but on a ferry first shipping around the whole island before reaching the destiny. Sometimes mistakes have nice consequences: Thus we were able to gain an overview over the island first.

On the island we strolled around the little alleys with 'dried things shops' (yes, thing is the most appropriate word as they offered anything dried from dried fruits, fried seahorses to something I don't even know what is was. Yes, they eat allthe dried things...), we climed the highest mountain of the island (93 m high :-), went by cable car to the second hightes hill (at least over sea level), walked along the beach and tested the water temperature (original plan:with our hands only, but one of us tested it with shoes and socks as well by accident:-).

Back in the old town of Xiamen we found an Esprit shop which changed our sightseeing trip into a sightseeing & shopping trip.

On the last day we found out how difficult it is to find proper breakfast on a Monday morning at 9:30 am in the university district. Maybe just to early for usual university students! A stroll around the sea alameda, enjoying the sun (I'm even slightly red today), visiting Nanputuo Si (a temple with a vegetarian restaurants for the monks and guests like us), eating ice cream ( 0,20 EUR each!!!)- and then it was already time to go to the airport to fly back to Beijing.

Easter and 'in the cold again'

I hope you have spent happy Easter! In Xiamen we had a little Easter egg search thanks to Claudia. Apart from a chocolate egg, I now have 'eggy' as my new companion :-).

Heating season in Beijing which is established by law lasted until the 15th March. There is a Beijing saying that just after heating season has ended, it's getting colder again. I can definitely confirm that! Brrrrrhhhh!

Riding horses, new toufa style and shopping pearls

2008-03-16T04:09:00.000-07:00

Riding horses

For Saturday, my Chinese colleague-friend and her family had invited me to go horse riding with them. As I'm a little bit scared of horses and haven't been on one since very young age, I just promised to watch their daughter (Julia) ride on the horse and enjoy the nature.

But watching their daughter ride on the bike (looked quite professional already), I felt I should just try it as well.

So that's what I did. I got a bigger horse named "Ping Ping" (one meaning of the Chinese word "ping" is bottle, but probably it's another pronunciation and meaning of "ping"or would you wanna call a horse "bottle bottle"?) and a teacher.

It's not easy getting on a big horse and of course horses don't keep quiet when you try to seat yourself in the saddle, but I somehow managed. The lesson itself was unspectacular - I was being taught basics - the correct feet position etc. - except once when the horse didn't want to listen to the teacher anymore, just ran off and I had to try hard to stay on the horse and not fall down.

After this lesson I knew that riding horses can be considered as sport as you really have to use your muscles!

Pot hot, hot pot...

For dinner I met Barbara (the Malaysian friend), her boyfriend and some friend of theirs for hotpot. Hotpot is some soup pot where you insert whatever you want to eat (mushrooms, frozen tofu, green vegetables). We were quite an international group: 1 Malaysian, 1 English, 1 Austrian, 1 Australian, 1 Scottish, 1 Chinese and 1 German! The Chinese lady was quite a personality: Because she didn't like the food, she complained very loud and very angry - I was quite astonished about her straightforward way. I also got to know the sad news about Tibet from Barbara's boyfriend. I really hope there's gonna be a peaceful solution!

Shopping pearl necklaces

Today I went shopping with Claudia. We went to Hongqiao market which has a fame for both real and fake pearls. After the shopassistent of one of the marketstalls had scratched with her scissors on the pearl and the pearl was still ok and without scratches, we were convinced that this were not plastic pearls. However, we still bargained hard and I think we got the necklaces for good prices. We also bought fans with Chinese style paintings on them before we set off to walk around in Tiantan park in the nice weather.

I wish you all a relaxed new week!

Visiting Kongze

2008-03-10T06:22:00.000-07:00

Shopping hours

Good thing about Chinese Sundays is that shops are not closed on Sunday (They don't have the German Ladenschlussgesetz :-)). So supermarkets, pharmacies, malls and markets are open as on every day and you can go shopping. Maybe it's not exactly a good thing for the people who have to work on Sunday, but then Chinese culture is not built on Christian belief (most Chinese are atheists or buddhists).

Our new friend Kongze?
Kongze is the Chinese name for Confucius, a Chinese philosopher. He was no god, but many Chinese hold high esteem for him that's why there is a temple in Beijing for Kongze.
Kongze invented a kind of state system, the Confucian state system. The main principle of Confucianism is that human beings should live according to an exact hierarchy system - Women should obey men, younger people should obey older people, inhabitants should obey the king, but those in power also have to make sure they have achieved the necessary educational level. I'm happy that I don't have to live in Confucian China.

In the Kongze temple area there were a lot of old and weirdly grown trees. Legend says that one old tree once punished a corrupt minister. When the minister passed below the tree the tree lost a big branch on him. It seems that the trees there can distinguish between right and wrong! Agnes and me were deeply impressed.

After the visit to the Kongze Tempel we strolled around in the surrounding hutongs which are currently being refurbished.

Fragrant Hills and Azure Clouds

2008-03-08T05:05:00.000-08:00

Sports in Beijing - Hot Yoga and climbing up the Fragrant Hill Peak

I still do hot yoga quite often because I like it. This Friday afternoon I once again went with my Chinese boss and a nice Chinese colleague.

But it's also nice just to walk around outside in the mountains or parks and climb hills combined with some sightseeing. As the whole week was quite sunny and warm we had scheduled a trip to the Fragrant Hills for today.

Today when we woke up the sun was there - but hidden behind some clouds (positive interpretation) or behind the smog (realistic interpretation). Nevertheless the bus to the Xiangshan - Fragrant Mountains - was alreay crowded like hell and on the standard hike up the hill there were "people jams". Some seemed to belong to a school and some to a company trip as they all wore the same T-shirt and had big flags with them.

On the way down we chose a quieter path - at some spot there was a small Chinese choir practicing - we just sat down for a while, listened, relaxed, enjoyed the relatively fresh air of the mountains and watched the squirrels (German: Eichhoernchen) jump around in the trees.

In the park downstairs we visited another temple - the Temple of Azure Clouds (Bi yun si). Specialties there were:

1. the hall of over 500 wooden carved old "arhat" sculptures (arhats = pupils of buddhas) covered with gold. Every arhat was different in gesture, facial expression etc. Wow!

2. a pound full of goldfishes. If you paid 80 Kuai (8 EUR) you could release a goldfish from the small aquarium at the shop next door and give it freedom in the temple pond. This seems also to bring luck to the person doing that.

Kung fu monks and old buddhas in Henan province

2008-03-02T05:48:00.000-08:00

City of Luoyang

Well, not really that much worth visiting although it used to be Chinese capital early in Chinese history. Luoyang is mainly an industrial city producing energy (coal power plants), machines and supposedly the EURO coins (I don't know whether they produce the real or the fake ones :-)). Amazing that they are constructing a totally new city centre which is modern architecture (nothing special indeed) and which they are very proud of.

Longmen Grottoes

UNESCO World heritage again. The villagers sculptered these stone buddhas (over 100.000 from 2 cm up to 45m tall) in caves(1.352 caves) back in 494 AD already. Strolling around the river and climbing up some stairs we could visit many of the statues.

Other sights near Luoyang

Nice was the first buddhist temple in China, the Baima Si (white horse temple). Legend has it that white horses carried the first buddhist scriptures / texts from India to the place of Baima Si in 68 AD. We learned a lot about the Chinese form of buddhism there. Now I know that in Chinese buddhism they have five buddhas: the buddha of past, present and future as well as the buddha of north, centre (being the same one as the buddha of the present) and south. The buddha of present can appear in three different forms whereas the others only have one form. Sometimes it's hard to judge the difference. I was told that often even Chinese believers have to have a look on the inscription saying "This is present buddha" in order to know what kind of buddha it is.

The earthern cave dwellings are houses built inside the earth. Farmers built them like this in the past in order to save material costs: They just had to dig. The cave dwelling we visited belonged to a 100-year old grandma. Being able to chat with people like that you notice how much worth it is to learn at least some basic Chinese! The 100-year old grandma belongs to the generation of women where the following was considered as beautiful: small mouth (so-called cherry mouth), small hands (good for homework) and small feet (can't run away). I think I wouldn't have been able to find a man back then in China! The grandma had lillie-feet which means that her feet were broken when she was young in order to make them smaller. The negative consequence: Lillie-footed women couldn't walk without pain. That's why the Chinese government abolished this old custom already some time ago.

Shaolin temple

Originally an old temple which burned down in some kind of civil war and was reconstructed which is said to be the home of Chinese Martial Arts (Kung Fu).

Kung Fu has many different styles: Fighting with or without weapons, another style with a more yoga approach of fighting etc.. Kung Fu movements are taken from animal movements.

In a show at one of the many Kung Fu schools around the temple we could see amazing Kung Fu - children breaking wood and metal with only one hand and other amazing jumps and movements!

Also interesting - the pagoda forest where the Kung Fu fans can show their appraisal of the dead masters. Only one of the masters had his pagoda built before he died. It says that he suddenly died right after the pagoda was finished.

Today Shaolin monks are rich monks. The head of them could be considered as the "Shaolin CEO". A lot of tourists travel there. Luckily, we weren't there in high season so we still could enjoy the sight.

Urgently send me gas masks :-)!

2008-02-29T01:59:00.000-08:00

Surprise, surprise!
Today when I came home from office after one week of mainly compliance topics (including being a trainer for anti-corruption trainings every day) my first thought was: are they trying to poison us?

One of the neighbours of my floor had been moving out recently and now they are renovating the whole flat. So is it the smell of fresh paint? I don't know. The smell is all over my apartment as well and it's a more chemical smell than I had ever smelled before in my whole lifetime.
If it is fresh paint there are probably no regulations about what chemicals you are forbidden to mix into paint.

I urgently need to escape from home!

Buddha art in Beijing

2008-02-24T03:22:00.000-08:00

No time for relaxation this weekend. Claudia had heard that there is a special exhibition about buddhist art this weekend in Beijing - so we (Claudia, Agnes and me) of course had to go there!

A huge line of Chinese people waiting to go into the exhibition awaited us in front of the exhibition hall. But luckily we didn't have to wait too loong and soon made it inside.

The title of the exhibit was: "The lights of Dun Huang" because it showed the buddhist art of the caves of Dun Huang in China which is Unesco world heritage and simply amazing.

Big lying buddha, colourful paintings with people having their hair cut, with gods sitting on the clouds or bodhisvattas with many many arms! The following homepage gives an introduction on the different Chinese forms of buddha: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/chin_deities.htm. Just click on the one you are interested in and then on "text explanation" (if available).

Many buddhas later we also visited the second exhibit about new year's posters (many of them from Mao's time showing propaganda pictures with slogans like: "Mao loves children", "hard working communist farmers with enough food and never ending happiness in life"). Yes, long live Chairman Mao :-)!

If from reading my blog or in general you are interested in Chinese history, there is a suspenseful book about three generations of Chinese women (from lillie-foot over communism to modern China) which I am reading right now and which I can highly recommend: Jung Chang (author): Wild Swans (German: "Wilde Schwaene").

Another book comparing Chinese with western culture which is quite funny is the German book from Herbert Rosendoerfer: "Briefe in die chinesische Vergangenheit", fiction, but with at least some cultural truth in it.

Hope you also enjoyed your weekend!

Great Wall in the new year again

2008-02-23T06:43:00.000-08:00

Today Claudia, another Katharina, Thomas, Stefan and me went to the Simatai section of the Great Wall.

The way there was already great fun because of our driver who probably wanted to beat the latest world record time for driving the road from Beijing to Simatai. He consistently ignored the "do not overpass in a zigzag way" traffic sign (yes, there is such a traffic sign in China) and took over the first car on the right side, the next on the left, the next on the right (the hardshoulder, but who cares :-)?) etc.

The Simatai part of the Great Wall is said to be much original and without restauration. In fact, it's not that much unrestored, just little parts of the hike on the wall are really orginal. Sometimes we could choose between two ways to climb up the hill, but: "the ways are the same, but different." (???) as local people trying to sell books and postcards explained to us at one of the cross-ways. The view in the mountains, the relatively (in comparison to Beijing) fresh air and the nice mountain lake with a bouncing bridge (ahhh!, why would people jump around on bouncing bridges?) were idylic and wild at the same time and not many tourists were around Simatai at this time of the year.

Olympic mascots, eggplants, dragons and more

2008-02-22T07:27:00.000-08:00

Lantern festival

Today when it was dark we visited the lantern festival in Hua Da Guan Yuan, the World Flower Park of Beijing.

Inside the greenhouse flowers, trees and grass were arranged to build sculptures with themes like the olympics or luck for the new year.

Outside in the park (with a cold wind blowing through the park) were lanterns / light sculpures.

Except us mainly Chinese families with small children visited the park because for children this is a very nice experience.

The lanterns represented flowers, vegetables like eggplant or pumpkin, rats (because it now is the year of the rat) or other animals.

Just have a look at the photos to have an impression yourself.

Yuanxiao Festival

2008-02-21T04:27:00.000-08:00

Fireworks nonstop! - sweet rice balls nonstop?

Today is the 15th day of Chinese New Year festival which is the last day of this festival.

I was wrong last time to tell you that the traditional day to eat sweet rice balls was yesterday, in reality this day is today. I got some wrong information there- that's why I have been eating sweet rice balls now for three days in a row :-). I even ordered the rice balls yesterday night especially for Agnes who now is a great fan of sweet rice balls, aren't you, Agnes :-)?

Firework started today quite early at around 6pm and you can see a lot more firework than during the last days. Why that? It's the last day on which the Chinese are allowed to greet the new year with fireworks - tomorrow it is prohibited again. That's why everybody is using the left-overs now.

From my apartment in the 5th floor I have a nice view on the firework - pls. see the attachment.

I especially enjoyed my experience about the first Chinese festival I was able to join in!

Forever Chinese new year?

2008-02-19T04:24:00.000-08:00

It's still festival time (新年快乐！xīn nián kuài lè = Happy new year). Chinese new year is the longest festivity in China. But since last week Wednesday we do have to work again.

How do you notice that it is still Chinese New Year?

Every night at approximately 8 or 9m pm still more or less noisy fireworks can be heard outside.

Another thing is that Chinese new year is a lot about food. On special days special food needs to be eaten. Tomorrow is the day of sweet rice balls:
"no Lantern Festival celebration would be complete without yuanxiao, the sticky rice balls that are symbolic of family reunion and happiness. Recipes vary from region to region: In Taiwan many people make yuanxiao without fillings. But in different parts of China, yuanxiao often are stuffed with sweet pastes made with sweet red beans, dates, lotus seeds, coconut, peanuts, and sesame seeds. All are served in a sweet soup."

Today at work Xuguang, a colleague of mine, distributed a package of peanut rice balls for everybody in our department. My colleagues explained to me how to prepare and eat them, so I tried them today. Tastes a little bit like "Dampfnudeln"(typical German yeast dumplings) with peanut paste inside.

Whole China in one day?!

2008-02-16T01:00:00.000-08:00

Did we really visit whole China (with Tibet and Taiwan) in one day today?

Of course we didn't, but we went to the Chinese Ethic Culture Park, an open-air museum with reconstructions of typical buildings of many diverse Chinese provinces located in a quite lovely park.

After having tried a jazz dance lesson in the gymn in the morning (OK, but this will not become my favorite sport...), we drove to the Chinese Ethic Culture Park and walked around in splendid sunshine (according to Yahoo weather online: 5 degree, 13% humidity)

Many minority regions were represented such as Tibet, Guizhou or Yunnan, places where I definitely want to still travel anyway. The houses and architecture was totally diverse: stupa temples, pagodas, wooden houses, stone houses, painted doors, coloured flags etc. Of course the buildings were fake, but still the visit was worth it. Claudia and me strolled around in one part of the two parts of the park for 2,5 hours in the sun and then returned home.

Please have a look at the photos to have an impression yourself. I have no idea whether the monk was a fake or a real one :-)...

Goodbye Vietnam - Saigon / Vietnam Part III

2008-02-14T04:10:00.000-08:00

Saigon, the real capital of Vietnam

Saigon or Ho-Chi-Min (HCM) City as it is officially called after the national hero Ho Chi Minh (please see my Hanoi entry in the blog) was much more worth the visit than Hanoi. Not only because of its pleasant weather - around 30 degree celsius - but only because of what is offers.

Yes, there are as many motorbikes as in Hanoi. Yes, Saigon couldn't really be considered as clean.

But: the atmosphere is quite relaxed there. Some compare it to the lively atmosphore of Singapur in the 70s.

Visiting the war remnant museum is worth it. A lot of photos show the cruelty of war - of course due to ideologic reasons mainly photos of crimes committed by the American and the French, but not of the crimes committed by the Vietnamese. This museum shows once more that war is no means to solve conflicts (in general, between politic parties / religions / ideologies / colour of skin, whatever).

The reunification palace used to be the governmental office of the Southern Vietnamese (capitalist, supported by the American in the war against the Northern Vietnames / communists; the communists won the war; now Vietnam still calls itself a communist country, but the econonmy seems quite capitalist). The architecture being ugly 1960s architecture, inside is the room where Southern Vietnames president General Minh announced to the Northern Vietnames that Southern Vietnam surrendered and that he was transferring the power to Northern Vietnam. The answer he got was: "There is no question of you transferring power. You cannot give up what you do not have."

This was my Vietnam trip.
To put it all in a nutshell: worth visiting, but from my impressions so far I prefer China.

Have a nice weekend!

Hui in Hue and Hoi An! / Vietnam Part II

2008-02-14T03:18:00.000-08:00

Exploring the centre of Vietnam

Hue and Hoi An are two cities in central Vietnam. I quite liked central Vietnam - it is far more relaxed than the big cities although still there are a lot of motorbikes and it just pains me to see all the garbage on the floor and in the rivers (the Perfume river in Hue has this name because it used to smell nice with all the flowers on the river banks. Now the river is so dirty you can't smell the flowers anymore, inhabitants of Hue say). It is not hard to recognise here that Vietnam is mainly an agricularal country. Second important income source seems to be tourism which unfortunately can be easily noticed in Hoi An.

Hue has a lot of Chinese influences. The Forbidden Purple City there has not only a name that ressembles the Forbidden City of Beijing - also the buildings and its purposes are similar, just a little bit different in style (yellow being prevalent in Hue while red is the prevalent colour in Beijing).

In Hue we also visited the Tomb of Emperor Tu Doc who had 104 wives and concubines, but no children (probably due to smallpox). Tu Doc was only 1,53 m high (probably due to smallpox as well) and built the mandarine stone statues guarding this tomb even smaller than he was!

Waterpuppet theatre is famous for Vietnam. The puppets' performance is done in water - quite weird, but also interesting to e.g. watch the fishermen puppets catch the fish puppets.

After a stop in Danang and the white marble mountains the next highlight was Hoi An.

Hoi An's city centre is UNESCO world heritage. It is nice to stroll along its pedestrian or pedestrian / motorbike streets at nights due to the unique atmosphere. However, many many tourists visit this town and nearly every single house is some tourist shop or restaurant nowadays...

In Hoi An I also went with an old rusty bike to the beach - My first beach trip of this year! Unfortunately, it was very stormy at the sea and it was impossible to stay there...

Khong co chi - in Hanoi / Vietnam

2008-02-14T02:46:00.000-08:00

Motorbikes, rice and red flags

Khong co chi (Welcome in Vietnamese)!

Vietnam is the country of motorbikes. Hanoi for example has 4 million inhabitants and 2 million motorbikes. That makes 2 persons per motorbike. But in fact you can see many of the motorbikes crammed with 3, 4 or even 5 people on one motorbike! Amazing!

Vietnam is also the country of rice production. The rice fields under water form a nice scenery- farmers working on them wearing the typical Vietnames hats. Vietnam even exports rice to China.

Hanoi, dirty capital

The streets of Hanoi were full of red flags - the national flag of Vietnam. The flag has a yellow star on it - the enblem of the Vietnamese communist party - and a red background - "the blood shed in the fight for Vietnamese independence". Vietnam is partying New Year at the same time as the Chinese do. It is called "Tet" there and people put national flags in front of their house for Tet. They also have new year's trees for decoration to ward off evil spirits. Kumquat trees and peach trees are highly appreciated as new year's trees.

Is Ho Chi Minh alive, embalmed or a wax copy?

Visiting Hanoi is quite interesting, but why is it not the most unique experience in the world?

1. Hanoi is dirty, very dirty indeed! This has some charme, but on the long run it is frustrating to always look on the floor to avoid stepping on garbage in the street.

2. Hanoi has many French style houses from the time the French colonialised Vietnam. But I still prefer France and Paris - real French stuff!

3. Visiting Ho Chi Minh mausoleum teaches you some manners: no shorts, no tank tops, no backback, no bag, no camera, no mobile phone, no talking, no hats and hands out of your pockets! Queue in pairs! It is interesting to see the man who somewhat freed Vietnam and established it as a Democratic Republic (which now it is not anymore), but aren't rumours going it isn't the real embalmed body but a copy from Madame Tussaud's?

Halong bay - where is my boat?

Halong is just out of Hanoi. Hanoi is a Chinese name and means: where the dragon descends into the sea. Halong is a nice rock-island formation in the sea. Legend says a dragon built it. It is UNESCO world heritage which is best to be visited on a boat and that's what we did! A little bit fog made it hard to see things clearly but this just added a mystical air to the place.

Of course too many tourists which made it hard after a land excursion with visit of a stalagmite - stalagtite hole to find our boat again...

First day of the rat year - more temple fairs!

2008-02-14T02:29:00.000-08:00

Beijing during Chinese New Year public holiday

The days before Chinese new year Beijing had changed a lot from what it usually is. No traffic jams, fewer cars, no long queues in the supermarkets, clear sky, fresher air.

This is due to the fact that Chinese new year is a family party - like Christmas in Western countries - and therefore everybody who has the possibility to return to his / her hometown does so.

Only on the day after we noticed how many people had still remained. Our target being Ditan (Altar of the Earth) temple fair we started rather early in the morning. Near Ditan we already had a traffic jam and we saw thousands of people (no exaggeration!) - were they all going to Ditan temple fair? Yes, they were!

Fight for your right to enter and exit!

Ditan temple fair was crowded like a football stadium. You had to push hard in order to make it through some gates. People with fear of big masses of human beings can probably not go there on Chinese new year.

Ditan temple fair itself was similar to Longtan temple fair the day before: foodstands, carneval articles, dance & drum shows, red coloured "lucky" decorations, rats in all kind of forms. The only difference to the day before: Everything much more crowded.

Happy Chinese New Year!

2008-02-06T08:55:00.001-08:00

Today is Chinese new year's day. The year of the rat has begun!

And we were of course in the middle of it!

It started after lunch when we went to Longtan New Year temple fair (we being Claudia, her brother, his girlfriend, Agnes, Thomas - two newly arrived infoyear attendees).

Many Chinese people, many red new year decorations, many foodstands and other things you could buy at the new year's market. Some things you could buy there resembled what we buy for carneval like coloured

After having had sushi for dinner together, we went to Houhai lake and celebrated new year there. Houhai lake is a scenic spot with many hutongs and a nice frozen lake... and the firework there was gigantic! It's not that you start a firework at 12 at night here in China, but they started all the day from 5 pm and now, at 1 at night local time they still go on.

My colleagues said it usually doesn't stop before 5am in the morning the next day!

The firework was bigger than all the fireworks I've seen so far in my lifetime! Unfortunately taking pictures of a firework is difficult, but I attach some photos of the market this afternoon.

See you! Happy new Chinese year to all of us!

Working weekend - bu hao war!

2008-02-03T05:11:00.000-08:00

After having worked overtime due to nice compliance topics on Friday, I had more than earned my Litschi Bacardi!
You might ask yourselve what I did this weekend. This time I am not going to tell you in detail because - WE WORKED! Yes, in the office. Yes, on the weekend.
Not because there was so much to do this weekend, but in order to "earn" some Chinese wide holiday. Next week we have one week off due to Chinese New Year. Two of these days are no real "days off", but they had to be exchanged with this Saturday and Sunday. That's why most companies in China worked this weekend!

The days before Chinese New Year are special days as well. Last week we happened to visit a dumpling restaurant (Teigtaschen) exactly on the day one week before Chinese New Year- a day when Chinese traditionally eat dumplings. Well, we didn't know this before, but my colleague told me only afterwards, so we wondered why it was that crowded and service that bad.

Tomorrow is another special day before Chinese new year. People eat wrapped pancake-like food with vegetable and meat filling then. Today for dinner two of my colleagues, my boss and me went to a vegetarian restaurant where we ate these filled with cucumber and beancurd made Beijing duck (kaoya).

Similar to our Christmas Chinese New Year is much about special food.
I shall tell you more about it soon. Next week the year of the rat starts. If you're interested in your horoscope in the year of the rat you can check German language homepage http://www.china-horoskop.com/

P.S.: Because I had many of you asking whether we have snow chaos in Beijing: no, nothing at all. No snow, around 3 degree celsius and nice weather so far.

I also attache a photo of the new olympic venue. They call it "Vogelnest" due to the architectural style. The second picture is new year's decoration including the rat.

Ice biking, Chinese new year preparation and Wangfujiing shopping street

2008-01-27T05:43:00.000-08:00

This Saturday - Ice biking and new year monsters!

This weekend I staid in Beijing. So my colleague - friend invited me to a Beijing winter trip with her family on Saturday. We went to Houhai lake which was frozen and went ice-skating and yes, ice-biking there. What is ice-biking Ice-bikes are bikes you can pedal with on the ice, but the difference from normal bikes is that ice-bikes have vats (Kufen') under the wheels (see photo). It was great fun! The sun was shining, the lake wasn't too crowded and we had a lot of fun! I even taught Julia (that's the English name of my colleauge - friend's daughter) some ice-skating. I was astonished I only fell down once despite the fact that I had not been ice-skating for ages.

For lunch, they took me out to a mushroom hotpot restaurant. Hotpot means that in the middle of the table there is a big pot for soup and you all eat out of it. The soup was great. It had more than sixty different kinds of mushrooms in it. Hotpot is a typical Chinese kind of dish. I especially liked the so-called tiger mushroom. Tiger mushroom is supposed to be especially good to prevent cancer.

On the way we also stopped to take a photo of the new olympic venues (National Aquatics Centre and National Stadium - interesting modern architecture!) which were recently finished. Many cars were parking on the side of the road already just to take a picture of themselves and the olympic venue.

In the afternoon we (Claudia and me) went on a culture lecture to learn about Chinese new year. The Chinese have a different year from ours. This year, Chinese new year starts on the 8th of February. That's why right now everybody is preparing (buying presents, etc. because the day before Chinese new year is somehow like our Christmas Eve). In the course we learned to paint some red Chinese calligraphy spring couplets. These are used to hang in front of your door to scare the "Xi" (Nian) monster off which is supposed to be afraid of red things - as far as I understood this legend.

The Chinese also have their own system of horoscopes. For their system, it doesn't matter in which month you are born, but in which year. E.g. for people born in 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993 and 2005 the astrologic sign is a rooster (Hahn / Henne). Roosters are supposed to be diligent, quick-witted, bold and pragmatic. Famous roosters were Confuciusa and Catherine the Great. I for example am a rooster as well (now, have a guess which year I was born :-)). If you don't know what Chinese astrologic sign you are, you can write me and I can find out if you want.

I shall tell you more about Chinese new year as soon as I participate in some further new year's events.

This Sunday - You can eat worms in Wangfujing shopping street!

Wangfujing is said to be the biggest shopping street in Beijing with a lot of malls, but also touristy shops and weird foodstalls nearby. In some part of the street, cars are not allowed and the street ressembles rather normal shopping streets there.

But I was scared off the foodstalls when I saw that they offered some worms / insects roasted on a spit (Spiess). And of course the street was very crowded because many Chinese buy new year gifts right now.

Intersting thing: I saw a Chinese brand shop there selling sport clothes and shoes. Have a look at my photo of its window whether the sign and their slogan sound familiar for you....? :-).

I quite liked the chopstick (Essstaebchen) shops where they only sell chopsticks in all variations. Now I have not only new Chinese books, but also new pairs of chopsticks. Hehe (she is Chinese, yes, this is her real name) supported me in getting some discount on the books. There is really hardly anything in China where you cannot get a discount or discount card. For the end of the day we tried out a new vegetarian restaurant "Lotus in the moonlight". Beancurd roasted duck (Tofuente) - Yummie!

Last thing: Last time I told you that at Jennie Lou's, the international supermarket, they had introduced linen bags and do not offer free plastic bags any more as before. Today I read this is a new Chinese law! They have a garbage problem here. That's why from the 1st of June 2008 supermarkets are not allowed to give their customers free plastic bags anymore. Now we know why.

Women hui lai le! Xi'an snow adventures

2008-01-21T05:28:00.000-08:00

Women hui lai le! (We are back!)

Xi'an snow adventures

This weekend Claudia (another infoyear attendee in Beijing) and me went to Xi'an.

We had the chance to discover an unique Xi'an. Why? Firstly, the main season for Xi'an trips starts in spring. Then it can be really crowded. Secondly, we experienced Xi'an with snow or better said: even snow chaos. It was constantly snowing and everything was covered with a layer of snow.

In our youth hostel, Xiangzimen Youth Hostel, which is built in the form of an old hutong house with many Chinese decorations and very helpful staff, located right in the centre of Xi'an, we had a Chinese style room. Very nice!

Already the way from the airport to the youth hostel took us ages because the snow was so much without any winter service on the road.

On Saturday, when we head off for the Terracotta soldiers, it was still snowing. There are more than 7000 Terracotta soldiers and some horses. They were built by the first Chinese king in approximately 200 AC in order to protect the king's tomb. This must have been quite a lot of work! The site is impressing. Our Chinese guide at this site was quite funny. He had a weird way of seeing things (like: "in the XY province of China, gypsies steal a lot" or other discriminating things like the treatment of farmers).

On Sunday, we mainly staid in the town center which in some parts looks old in Xi'an, like a real old city centre (something that does not exist in Beijing). We visited the Muslim Quarter with the biggest mosque of China. The Muslim Quarter was quite interesting. First we passed a muslim style market with many different nuts, dried fruit (we bought dried melon, dried pineapple and dried kiwi) and other sweets. In the quarter we tried some "green bean cake" and typical bread from the small shops there. We didn't try / buy neither pigs' claw (Schweinepfote) nor sheeps' head (Schafskoepfe) which were also sold there.

Another highlight was the Giant Goose Pagoda ("Da Yanta"). Supposed to be the "most well-known pagoda of China" (the Chinese really love superlatives) it is quite a big pagoda. Covered with a lot of snow it looked nice. We were surprised to see some swastika on the buddhist sculptures. They were in fact swastika opened to the left side and thus different from the nazi ones. We found out that these symbol is used to resemble the sun and is an old buddhist symbol: "In Buddhism, the swastika signifies auspiciousness and good fortune as well as the Buddha's footprint and the Buddha's heart. The swastika is said to contain the whole mind of the Buddha and can often be found imprinted on the chest, feet or palms of Buddha images."

Of course we climbed up the pagoda until we couldn't go any further. Going back into town, it was hard to find a taxi because it was still snowing hard. One taxi driver said he would bring us for 50 Kuai (the way there had cost us 15 Kuai). We didn't want to accept this kind of price increase. But after some time we found a normally priced taxi.

Our plane back to Beijing was delayed due to the weather conditions, but yesterday night, later than scheduled, but still, we arrive back in Beijing.

As always I attach some photos for you to have an impression of Xi'an.

THE two news of the WEEK

2008-01-17T02:58:00.000-08:00

Thanks for your many e-mails as reaction to my Harbin stories.

First news: SNOW
It snows again in Beijing since today!
So what is so special about it?
My observations:
1. no winter tyres on cars (confirmed by a colleague)
2. obviously no service provided by the city authorities to clear the streets from snow
3. obviously no law saying that the owner of a house has to clear the sidewalk from snow.

Second news: LINEN SHOPPING BAGS
Jenny Lou's is a supermarket all over Beijing (maybe even China). They sell Chinese and European products. Actually, it is mostly known for the European products. You can e.g. buy a large variety of cheese there (normal Chinese people don't cook with cheese).
They used to give customers free, one time usage plastic bags for the shopped goods. Now this has changed: you have to buy a linen, multi time usage shopping bag and bring it with you next time.
I see this as a sign of increasing environmental consciousness. Maybe a small step, but still.

Back from Ice and Snow - My Harbin trip

2008-01-14T00:10:00.000-08:00

Harbin weekend trip

Cold, colder, Harbin.

And we were there on the so far COLDEST day of the winter.

But let me give you an introduction first:

Harbin is located in Northeast China, on the railway track from Beijing to Moscow. I don't know why anybody would want to settle down in such a cold area, but I was told that summer's there are quite pleasant so maybe they built the town in summer and had spent too much money in the construction so they wouldn't want to leave once they noticed how cold it was there in winter time. Having "only" over three million inhabitants (the "only" being an "only" to Chinese standards), it is still the capital of a province.

Harbin has a long Russian-Chinese history. In fact, strolling around Central Avenue, most buildings look like either Moscow style (Russian) or St. Petersburg style (mixture of Russian and European). So when we arrived at the train station (we took the night train there), I thought I was in Russia. If it wasn't for the people on the street.... (they are looking very Chinese).

Harbin can give you a real winter experience with the Siberian winds reaching the city in winter time.

So Harbin is famous for winter activities. They have ski resorts nearby and they have the world's biggest Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival.

That's why we went there. The Snow Sculptures are fully made out of snow and carved by many artists (mostly Chinese, but some international artists as well). This year being 2008, they had the Olympics as one motto - the other motto was France.

The Bing Deng Festival or Ice Light Festival is the second big winter festival in Harbin. There, most sculptures, many as big as real buildings in form of temples and many other forms, are most interesting at night when they use different colours of light to make them colourful. Amazing! I also attached one photo of the Ice Lights (the colourful building at night)

Though walking through the park at -28 Celsius is really really hard for your body! Frozen legs and fingers are the minimum experience. And then imagine you want to take pictures with your camera!

What else did we do?

We visited a Siberian tiger park (of course the world's biggest of the kind. Yes, the Chinese like superlatives.). There we went inside with a truck and drove around in the tiger's park. It felt somewhat awkward driving around in there. The tiger's were really impressing.

Another highlight was the winter swimming. Each day at 2 pm (the "warmest" time of the Harbin day), there's the possibility to swim in the Songhua river at Harbin. The outdoor temperature then was only minus 18 degree Celsius.

Also, Songhua river is no river in winter. It is frozen and even heavy trucks can drive on it. So they need to prepare a hole in the ice in order to enable people to have a bath there!

The Chinese swimmers (one of them at the age of 82) walked the five minutes from the cabin to the hole in the river at normal speed and without showing signs of freezing. They were only wearing normal swimming clothes - as you can see them in Europe in the swimming halls. Then they got into the water and swam around for some minutes, got out and stoically walked back to the changing cabin.

Unfortunately, we hadn't brought our bikinis and bathing suits so we couldn't join :-).

The last interesting sight I want to mention was 731. 731 was a Japanese Germ Warfare Experimental Base during World War 2. There they had a germ factory where they grew germs for dangerous diseases (like the plague) that they would then throw out of a airplane over populated areas in China so that the Chinese might get ill from the diseases.

They also did human experiments there. "Scientifics" were doing experiments on real human beings (Chinese) to answer questions like: what happens to human beings if they are exposed to a vacuum? With which temperature of water do you have to treat a frozen leg in order for it to still be there afterwards and not fall of? The visit of the sight was very cruel.

If you want to know more about any of the sights I mentioned: google and wikipedia have entries about the sights and Harbin.

Last thing to mention is the souvenir I got from Harbin: although I was wearing many many layers of clothes I caught a cold :-(!

Hope to hear from all of you again soon!

Katharina

Back to Beijing Sightseeing - Tiantan

2008-01-05T04:12:00.000-08:00

Today I visited the Altar of of Heaven - Tiantan.

Tiantan is located in a big park area and - guess what? - of course being Saturday it was crowded with Chinese people doing sports, dancing, singing, playing cards etc.

I want to describe one kind of sport which is not known in Germany:

The thing they play with looks like a mixture of indiaca and badminton with feathers. But unlike badminton you do not play it with a racket and unlike indiaca you do not play it with your hands, but the Chinese play this game with their feet. Maybe somebody knows it and knows the name?

After having passed all the sporty people, I entered the altar area which until 1913 had only been open to participants of the yearly ceremony. Which ceremony? Well, the Son of Heavon, i.e. the respective king, had to bring animal sacrifices to Heaven. It seems that the ceremony was quite long (not a nice ceremony for vegetarians); in the end the sacrifices were burnt and the king had to sign an offical announcement that the ceremony had been held.

One curiosity: there was a door called the "Seventy year old door". One emperor was so old that the usual ritual way he had to walk by foot was too long for him. So they build a back door in order to shorten the way he had to walk before the ceremony. However, the emperor feared that his successors might become lazy and always use the short way. That's why he issued a decree saying that only kings older than 70 years were allowed to use this door.

Chinese food - yummy!

It is amazing how manifold chinese food is. I am not talking about dogs and ants, but about vegetables, fruit and tofu combinations. Just to give you some impression what this kind of food is like some examples:

- sweet corn and apple soup

- tofu fish (looks like fish, but is an imitation)

- rice porridge with spinach in it

- Chinese dumplings (a little bit similar to ravioli) filled with mushrooms and egg

Some vegetables and fruits I eat I do not even know the names of. But all in all I quite like the variety and taste of Chinese food.

For those who visit me you can really look forward to the food - I can show you some of the best Vegetarian Chinese food.

Back in Beijing

2008-01-03T04:07:00.000-08:00

After a holiday too a cold and relatively bosky ("waldig") European country in the heart of Europe I came back to Beijing yesterday.

I had spent Christmas with my family in the Augsburg region and New Year's Eve with my boyfriend in the Nuremberg region.
We spent New Year's Eve eating Raclette, shooting rackets into the sky, chatting and playing games with some friends. Especially the table racket was a highlight :-).

Apart from that, I can really recommend the new "Fürthermare", a newly built thermal bath including a fun bath with water slopes. So if you currently stay in the Nuremberg region: Fuerthermare is really worth going there. For more information pls. check: www.fuerthermare.de

Hope to hear from you.

New year greetings

2007-12-30T04:30:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody,

I am currently in Germany for Christmas and Western new year.

I wish you all a good start in 2008! May it be an excellent year with a lot of fun, health and new experiences for all of us!

Katharina

Christmas Breakfast and 798 Art District

2007-12-16T05:11:00.000-08:00

After a Christmas breakfast (or maybe you could call it lunch as we met at 12 am) at Claudia's apartment with a little bit of Christmas decoration and genuine German Weihnachtsplätzle which we had bought in a South-German bakery the plan was to discover Dashanzi Art District or 798 as it is also called. The district had been recommended to me by an American friend.

798 used to be a factory area that looks abandoned and has a somewhat shabby but alternative flair. Now many ateliers found their place there. Main focus is modern Chinese art. I loved strolling around there and the art hopping from one place to the next. A lot of Chinese people were there as well who combinded their Sunday afternoon walk with art.

The art itself was quite manifold. Some paintings in one gallery at the first look looked like traditional Chinese landscape painting, but on a closer look you could notice that the landscape painting was not that traditional due to the environmental pollution the painter had integrated, e.g. dirty rivers or factory chimneys.

I was astonished how much of the art coonveyed strong criticism - including self-critisism. And most of the art - though being modern - had something Chinese about it.

I most liked the photography (but this is maybe due to the fact that generally I quite like realistic photography and video installations).

Zhu Hendong's photography with his creative photos of landscapes and Chinese people attracted me as well as some pieces of the Gao brothers and the nice hutong photos of Ambroise Tezenas (being a French artists, but taking photos of Beijing).

I shall add some art to today's blog so that you can also have an impression. The photo in black and white is called "The last generation of lilly-footed women" (Artist: Li Nan). It used to be tradition in some part of China to tie the feet of women in a special form to keep them very small. Please check the link if you are interested in this former cultural pecularity.

http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/China/04/hutchins/hutchins.htm

Shopping christmas presents and White Cloud Temple

2007-12-15T04:15:00.000-08:00

Shopping Christmas Presents

Shop until you drop - this was this morning's motto. I met with my Taiwanese project colleague Gina in order to discover Xidan markets. The amazing thing was: Prices were good there and I didn't meet a single non Asian person during the whole morning in the market halls. Gina also helped me negotiating because of course prices were not fixed and the first price they tell you is overstated.

White Cloud Pagoda - Bai yun guan

In the afternoon I met Claudia (another German on the info year here) to discover the White Cloud Pagoda. This pagoda is one of the few Taoist temples left in Beijing. Taoists believe that you have to free yourself from material things and earthern desires.

I just quote one text of their philosophy here (in German):

"Nichts in der WeltIst so formlos und weich wie das Wasser. Doch nichts kann besser als Wasser das Feste und Harte aushöhlen. Selbst ist es nicht zu zerstören. Dass das Wasser das Feste besiegt, dass das Weiche das Harte besiegt -Niemand auf der Welt, der das nicht weiss. Und doch keiner, der es zu benutzen vermag."

Taoism (Geman: "Daoismus") is a very old belief. Herman Hesse was one of the more recent followers of Taoism. Taoist monks were long hair and often wear it in a knot. They also wear simple style clothes.

The photo on the left shows monks in the temple. The photo on the right shows a yard in the temple. The photo below shows Claudia with some coins which you use to throw coins and try to hit a clock to make it ring. This is supposed to bring luck.

So far for today. I wish you all a nice weekend.

Beijing Opera

2007-12-14T06:07:00.000-08:00

First snow

This week we had the first snow on Monday. On Tuesday it was gone and the sun was shining again, so it was a short interlude.

Buying a new watch

My Chinese colleagues here like shopping with catalogues and ordering things. So they showed me one catalogue and asked me if I also need something.

Inside I found a nice Swatch watch at a reasonable price. So they called the company and wanted to order their orders and my watch. Unfortunately, the watch was not on stock.

So for the next try my colleagues looked for online shops selling the same watch. That's how I found out that e-business in China is quite different from e-business in Germany.

In China, the online shop didn't have any order form online nor did they provide e-mail nor phone. They just provided a mobile number with the hint: "no call, sms only". That's exactly how the colleagues got in contact with the company.

Next difference is: you do not provide payment details like bank account or credit card nor do you receive the watch automatically by mail / express / courier service.

Instead you arrange a meeting place (often the Mc Donalds or KFC around the corner). There you meet and have a look at the merchandise. If you like it, you pay cash and take the merchandise with you.

This is how you do online shopping a la China. Interesting!

Beijing Opera

Tonight we went to some old Beijing opera place. The building is called Hu Guang Guild Hall and was already built in 1805. Thus it is a very traditional opera place.

Beijing Opera is actually a misleading name. It is not an opera like the one we know in Europe, but a totally different genre. And it does not originate from Beijing, but from somewhere else in China.

The music played in Beijing Opera is weird to European ears. At first you think it is totally random and shows no feeling of rhythm at all. But later you notice that it is skillfull.

Also the singing and talking is weird. Women sing and talk with a high-pitched (German: hohe) voice. Emphasis is put on words or sentences in a strange way.

Beijing Opera includes artistic highlights like throwing swords through the air, juggling or many back saltos.

The costumes are rich and some actors wear masks.

Some more information can be found under http://www.chinapage.com/xwang/index0.html or other homepages.

Holiday Friday - Summer Palace

2007-12-07T05:48:00.000-08:00

Adventure of getting there ans away

Whereas before I had already gone on the subway and sometimes on the bus, but never for really big distances, I decided to try to go to Summer Palace fully with public transport. This poses a challenge in China because there is a subway plan, but no bus plans at all.

All you have is some Chinese signs at the bus station which tell you where the bus is supposed to stop. Even during the bus ride all announcements are only made in Chinese.

So first thing that happened was that I got on the wrong bus although I had asked in my "best Chinese" whether it was going where I was planning to go. So I had to improvise. Some time the bus stopped at some subway station and I just got off.

But I finally made it there. The 1.5 hour trip on the public transport cost me 40 RMB (which equals 0.40 EUR). And the nice thing about public transport is that you get in touch with Chinese people. So I got to know a mother with her child. They were trying to learn English pronunciation by reading some words and sometimes they asked me for the right pronunciation . And I got to know another Chinese woman with whom I exchanged mobile numbers in order to enable further meetings.

Yi he yuan - The Summer Palace

Actually, the Chinese word "yuan" means garden or park and this is really what Summer Palace is: not really a palace but a wide area of park and Chinese garden.

The specialities there are:

- the world's longest colonnade (Wandelgang) with a huge variety of traditional paintings

- a lake with islands, bridges etc.. The lake was covered with ice and the scenery very beautiful

- Chinese gardens

- longevity symbols everywhere (long life)

I personally think that Yi he yuan is even more interesting than the Forbidden City. It attracted me like the Great Wall and I know I shall go there again and see what it's like in the different seasons (winter, spring, summer).

But just see the photos to have an impression yourself.

Have a nice weekend.

2007-12-05T02:41:00.001-08:00

Weekend in Nanjing

2007-12-03T06:53:00.000-08:00

Why Nanjing?

Nanjing used to be the Chinese capital and has a lot of historical sites although many things were destroyed (mostly by the Japanese in the Nanjing massacre -> 6 weeks invasion, approx.250.000 deaths, pls. refer to Wikipedia if you're interested to know more). Nan Jing literally translated means Southern capital.

Nanjiing offers:

- some part of the large city wall still in place including some gates.

- emperor's tombs (Ming dynasty) as well as a memerial site for the Chinese (Dr. Sun Yatsen) who freed them from British rule

- a soon opening museum remembering the Nanjing massacre (we visited what was already there :-))

- the Yangtse river (third longest river of the world) with an old railway bridge

The overnight train there was quite crowded, but hygiene was okay (not excellent though). We didn't sleep that well.

When we arrived we drove into the mountains ("Purpurgoldberge", "Zijin Shan") to visit the tombs, the Sun Yatsen memorial site as well as some strange stone monument. The stone monument was quite high and didn't look that interesting, but the surroundings were nice and the story of it: An emperor let it be carved and thought he could let it be moved to another place far away. He thought he could do that because as an emperor he thought he has divine power. But even many people couldn't move it not even a little bit.

Another highlight was a buddhist printing house. The only traditional one still existing in China. They still product the books with handwork / manpower only. Amazing! Unfortunately, the books are in old Chinese letters. And I cannot even read perfectly the new Chinese letters!

So far for the text. I shall attach some Nanjing photos for your reference.

ILL IN Beijing

2007-12-03T06:39:00.000-08:00

Ill in Beijing

Yes, you read correctly. Unfortunately, the unusual food here still causes me "problems" on average once a week so far. I hope that will improve because when I have stomach problems, I don't feel that good in general.

Apart from that last week I had some severe back pain. So my colleagues insisted on bringing me to the hospital. You might ask: Why the hospital and not a resident doctor?
This is due to the Chinese health system: They don't have many resident doctors here, but nearly all doctors practice at hospitals. That's why we went to an international hospital. The doctor was English and his suggestion was a injection of morphium. When I said I don't like injektions he gave me some pills which were so strong that I couldn't walk home on my own. Luckily, two Chinese colleagues had come with me to the hospital and they brought me home. They are just so nice!
With the medicamentation I slept the rest of the day and the whole night and felt better two days afterwards.

But I wanted to try something different to strong Western medicamentation: That's why today I went to acupuncture. They put a lot of needles into the muscles that need strenghtening. I hope that works all right.

Sunday

2007-11-25T00:55:00.000-08:00

As promised, in order to be able to attach more photos I seperated Saturday and Sunday.

This weekend was not really a big sightseeing weekend but thus I got some time to relax.

However, I did a little bit of sightseeing today.

I visited a hutong near the White Pagode "Baita Si" and the White Pagode temple itself. The hutong was quite "real". No tourists in it apart from myself. Thus I could see some real hutong life. Children playing on the street, bicycles trying to sell charcoal (Holzkohle) for the heating, small shops, people cooking.

Also the Baita Si was not crowded. In fact, apart from me I think there were maybe five more visitors (all Asian). The White Pagode is the biggest bottle shaped pagode of Beijing. It was built under the Mongolian King Kublai Khan by a Nepalese architect. The pagode itself is 51 meter high. Inside the temples around the pagode there's some nice religious sculptures.

I attach some photos so that you can have an impression about Baita Si.

I wish you all a nice start into the new week!

Saturday

2007-11-25T00:34:00.000-08:00

Today I do two postings. One for Saturday and one for Sunday. This enables me to easily attach more photos.

Friday night I went out for dinner with Barbara (the Malaysian). We went to a good Vietnamese restaurant where they had similar dishes to our favorite Vietnamise restaurant in Berlin Spandau (do you remember? - they even had the same spring rolls and a similar vegetable curry!). They just offered some weird additional foodstuff. For dessert I had sweet rice with durian. You might ask yourself now: what the hell is durian?

I never had this fruit before and it's actually quite weird. It's called the "king of fruits" by South-East Asian people. The flesh which you can eat has yellow colour and the speciality is that it smells! To me the dish smelled of sports shoes with a lot of sweat in them. This doesn't really sound delicious. But the taste was OK. I'm not a new fan of durian, but I can manage to eat it and I don't have problems about still having the durian taste in my mouth three days afterwards like others. If your interested in durian fruit, pls. also check: http://bethge.freepage.de/duriandt.htm (the webpage is in German, but it has photos of the fruit and provides some nice explanation).

On Saturday, a Chinese colleague of mine (Sun-ya) had invited me to visit her home and get to know her family. This was a very nice experience. Both her husband and her daughter are very nice. Her daughter learns English at school but she was quite shy and didn't dare to talk a lot with me at first. For lunch they invited me to some Vegetarian buddhist restaurant near the Lama Temple "Yong he gong". They had delicious meat and fish imitations as well as "haochi" vegetables. I can't really tell the name of the vegetables I ate because I never or hardly ever saw them before in my life, but they were delicious. Vegetarian buddhist meant they didn't have any dishes with fish, meat, pork, garlic and onions. Neither do they serve alcoholic drinks.

Saturday night Rebecca (a Swedish-American woman from the language school) and me wanted to go to a cinema to watch a Chinese movie with English subtitles. It's called "Lost in Beijing". But when we got to the cinema there was a big sign saying that the cinema apologizes but they need to close until January because the landlord just decided to do some renovation work. What a pity! So instead we had a coffee together and chatted about our Asian experience which was interesting because Rebecca studied Japanese (language and history) before and can compare her Japanese experiences with our Chinese experiences.

Today's fotos show:

1.a typical Chinese foodstall on the street

2. a cushion I got as a present from a colleague (I'm not gonna comment further)

Xing qi si = Donnerstag = Thursday

2007-11-22T05:18:00.001-08:00

At the language school, the lesson is mostly Chinese and only a little bit English.

Therefore I'm making big steps ahead in the Chinese language.

In the lunch break I stroll around in the park and I also went to Tianmen Sqare (literally translated: heaven's gate square). This square is really big - I think it is comparable to the Red Square in Moskow, but there is much more police on the place in Beijing. What still sometimes bothers me is that a lot of security staff and police wear big guns. I'm just not that much used to it and I always feel angst (yes, this word does exist in English).

Also at work security staff bring the cash for our cashier (yes, there is a safe for cash in our office!) so sometimes they just wait outside our office and when I go to the toilet I need pass them. They just look so stern.

Apart from that, I'm getting used to using the subway. It's just so quick although it's quite crowded. And it is "hen pianyi" (very cheap) - a ticket usually costs 2 yuan, that's 0,20 EUR.

I just upload some fotos from the park and then I need to "xuexi" - learn!