Category: travel

Today I went to the Lama temple, it’s the only Tibetan temple in Beijing. It was originally some sort of palace back in the 1600’s, but then some emperor converted over to this type of Buddhism and he turned it into a temple. The place is large and is packed with interesting things to see. It’s a wonder that none of it was destroyed in the various violent parts of Chinese history. It is still a functioning temple as well, many many people were there today making offerings and praying. Interestingly enough, I saw no Tibetans, at least I didn’t see anyone that looked Tibetan to me. The temple houses many statues, including the largest Buddha in Beijing (in China?), it’s 18 meters tall. The building it is in barely holds it, the head is touching the roof. Every building had something amazing in it, statues, paintings, relics, etc. Unfortunately you are not supposed to take any pictures in the buildings. I’m not sure if that is to protect the artifacts or just to keep some decorum in a place of worship. it didn’t stop some French tourists from snapping away though, they were oohing and aahing over the people praying and offering incense as if they were doing it for the tourists. What a bunch of asses…

I never got into Tibetan Buddhism, it is far too complicated for my tastes. There are 4 different schools and seemingly endless practices spread across those four schools of thought. The Tibetans took very seriously the idea that there are an infinite number of ways to achieve Buddhahood, there are seemingly an infinite variety of practices in the Tibetan tradition. A reporter once incredulously asked the current Dali Lama if enlightenment could be found through drugs, the Dali Lama’s response was, “I sure hope so!” The Tibetans recognize types of gods in their canon, but interestingly, they are subject to desires and disappointments just like humans. Some practices involve the building up of a certain god in the practitioners mind, what he looks like, his powers, etc. and then deconstructing him until there is nothing left. The process can take 10 years or more. Another school (one of the tantras?) makes initiates perform 100,000 prostrations to Buddha before they begin the religious training. And those are full prostrations, starting from a standing position and ending up prone with the forehead on the floor. it takes people 2 to 5 years to do this typically…

Suffice it to say I didn’t really understand or appreciate everything I saw today, but i did see one thing that I enjoyed immensely. The ideas in Zen Buddhism have had a great impact on me. Off to one side, there was a shrine to Shakyamuni, that is what the Tibetans (and maybe the Chinese in general) call the historical Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama). Along side him were two followers, Ananda and someone else. Ananda is considered the first Zen patriarch and how he got that title is one of my favorite religious stories. The Buddha called all of his disciples together and announced that he had a teaching for them. He then took out a flower and held it in front of him, not saying a word. All of the disciples were confused and didn’t know what to make of this, except Ananda, he just smiled. Ananda showed that he understood the true nature of existence and was not tied to language or thoughts to experience them. That is the essence of Zen…

I’m ranking this place right up there with the great wall and the Forbidden city as far as places to go in Beijing. I would definitely recommend this above the summer palace and the temple of heaven. Like the forbidden city, it is the original and unlike all of the other sites, it is still being used for it’s original purpose, it is not just a tourist attraction. I get the feeling that most of the locals, and certainly the tour guides do not think of this place as central to their history or culture. maybe it isn’t, but it sure is a great place to see and it is very interesting. I’ve put up the pictures, click on “The rest of them” in my pictures area to see them.

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Nancy picked me up around 10 and we went over to the cooking school for my lesson. The description I got when I booked and what I got was WAYYYYY off. It said I would be in a hotel that specialized in dumplings, that it would be 8 hours long, and that we would go to a market. I ended up staying at the cooking school about 3 hours, and we didn’t d any dumplings. She offered to take me to a vegetable market afterwards, but I decided that I didn’t want to do that. The lesson itself was pretty good. We made sweet and sour pork, a Sichuan chicken and peanut dish, and steamed a fish with ginger and garlic. It was probably the best (non duck) meal that I’ve had here.

It was interesting to see how little actual cooking goes on. Most of the work involves the preparation and selection of the ingredients. Cooking time for the wok dishes were all under 6 minutes. Nancy showed her lack of knowledge about western cooking when she said that Chinese cooking is much more difficult than western cooking. I believe that western style cooking is a bit more complex…

After that, I went on a tube hunting expedition. I had gotten some leads on where to look in my scouring of the internet. I will now offer some more detailed directions…

Take the subway to the Xidan stop and walk north. The street eventually turns into xisi beidajie (street) and you’ll see a bunch of electronic marts on the left side. These are pretty interesting, all sorts of connectors, capacitors, mosfets, diodes, hexfreds, etc. I had been to some markets for pearls and silk, this was just like them, but for electronic stuff. A few of them had some tubes, there is zero English spoken, so be prepared to do lots of hand waving and writing of models. I found a variety of Chinese tubes, but none of the really nice ones (valve art or TJ), one guy was buying some Chinese WE 6l6 reproduction (I can’t remember the model number) and they brought over a tube tester and were matching them for him. The best selection was at 93 xisi, a good part of the shop was dedicated to tubes and they had the prices listed right on the counter.

I didn’t end up buying anything from these guys, I was really hoping to get some good prices on the really nice TJ stuff like their 45, 50, px25, or even the 205d. No such luck… There is still an outside chance that I can buy them from the factory. It’s odd, the tubes are made here, but they are all destined for Hong Kong, the US, and Japan. I bet I could get some good prices in Hong Kong, oh well….

I caught up with Anne that night. Went to a locals place to eat, and then went to bed. I’m going to try to take it easy the next couple of days because I have been visited by the blister fairy…

When I booked my hotel, I also signed up for a couple of other programs. I figured that I’d want to do some things after mom and Rick left, but I wanted to do some different things, maybe not what everyone else does. “Nancy” came and picked me up at 8:30 in the morning (groan). Nancy is her taken western name. Her actual name in Chinese literally translated is “Snow White”, pretty cool eh? Anyway, when I signed up for the tours, the fine print said that at least two people had to sign up. I figured that it was no big deal, if no one else signed up, it would be cancelled and I’d do something else. As it turns out no one else signed up, and they did not cancel it! I had my own driver and tour guide for two days! It was really nice, we were able to talk about whatever we wanted and we were able to change the schedule as I wanted.

Our first stop was back to the great wall. Earlier I went with mom and Rick to the Badaling section, This day I went to the Juyongguan pass section. I now understand why The Badaling section is more popular than this one, The Juyongguan pass covers some really serious vertical distance. This was a real workout, all stairs, the original stairmaster, LOL. As you can see from the pictures, it is quite a way up. I was beat and my legs were rubber by the time I was through…

After we ate, we went to an Army base so I could do some target shooting. I’m not much of a gun person, but I thought that this would be an interesting thing to do, and it was. We first went into a room to select a weapon, and there were probably 40 or 50 guns to choose from. They had pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, automatic, semiautomatic, assault rifles, etc. They also had a wide range of ages from new back to world war II vintage stuff. So I could shoot with a current M-16, a Lugar pistol, a Sig Sauer rifle from the 70’s, an actual Uzi, or any number of other guns. I would think that someone that was really into shooting or guns would love this place. You do have to pay of course. There is a nominal fee for the gun chosen and then you pay per round of ammo shot. The price varies from weapon to weapon and with the type of ammo used. I do think that there is quite a markup on the ammo, but in China, the government is the sole provider, so what can you do? I decided to start out with an AK-47 (Kalishnikov), it’s a standard weapon all over the world and seemingly the national weapon of Yemen… Because of the cost, I did not do any automatic shooting, I was strictly a single shot guy. I think I did pretty well for a first timer, the picture of the target is up on my flickr page. That was at 25 meters, I backed it up to 35 the next time and didn’t do quite as well, but I still managed to hit the center target 3 times out of ten.

It was a bit disconcerting since I was shooting for the first time. The target was far enough away that I couldn’t tell if if I was hitting it or not. I didn’t know until the target was brought in. What sticks with me most is the sound and the smell. Those suckers are LOUD. Even with the ear protection on, I was amazed at how loud it was, I cannot imagine shooting that without protection, my hearing would be nothing in no time flat. I don’t like the smell of the smoke from the rounds, it was much more acrid than I anticipated. Oh, the other thing I’ll remember is the shells FLYING out of the gun, it was a bit startling. Once I got the hang of the recoil, I was able to do it pretty well. I then tried a Chinese “sniper” rifle, sorry, I don’t have the model number… I was expecting to do better with this, but either their explanation of the sighting system lost something in the translation, or the scope was off because I wasn’t anywhere near as accurate. Since I had a scope, I could see where I was hitting the target and could adjust, but since the rounds were about 2 bucks a piece, I kept it down to 10 shots. Despite being a smaller caliber, this rifle had much more recoil and a louder report.

Unfortunately, since this was on an army base, photographs were not allowed. When I asked why, the guide said that they didn’t want their secrets getting out. Of course since I was there, and it was a shooting range, I can’t imagine there were any secrets to be had. I couldn’t even keep any of the shells… Oh well. If anyone out there is interested in trying this out, drop me a line and I will put you in touch with a guide that can take you there.

It was a short day as far as doing stuff goes. We went to the temple of heaven in the morning, a most impressive place. Take a look at the pictures if you don’t believe me:-) We then ate and went to “silk street” (more about that later), then mom, Rick, Steve and Brenda left for their next destination in China. I took the subway back to my new hotel! It turns out the subway is a dead simple thing to use. There are only 3 lines, line 1, line 2, and line 13… Don’t ask me, I don’t know what that’s about…

Anyway, I went back to my new hotel. I couldn’t afford the 5 star hotel that I had been staying in (thanks guys for the fancy digs my first 4 nights!), so I found a cheaper place. This is listed as a 2 star and it is costing me all of $26 bucks a night. The room is really small, small enough that when I put my bags on the floor (there is no closet), I have to crawl on my bed to get to the desk because there is no longer any floor space! The bed is rather hard and I have what is possibly the world’s heaviest pillow. It feels like it is filled with pellets of some sort, so it isn’t soft, but it does mold to the shape of your head. Despite these two things, I sleep really well, no problems with comfort. This place does have something that I have never seen in a hotel room before at all, a computer with high speed internet access. And get this, there is no additional fee for the internet! So this place gets a big thumbs up from me, it’s clean, has high speed internet, is comfortable (for me), and is CHEAP! I didn’t do much the rest of the day, just wandered around the neighborhood to see what there was to see. I went to bed early because I was beat and because I would have to get up early for my next day’s tour…

This was the day when some of Rick’s friends joined us. We went to the Great Wall and to the summer palace during the day and then to a Peking opera at night. Today was def. a tourist day. The great wall is certainly worth seeing, but it’s important to understand that the Badaling section (which is the most popular section for tourists) is almost all new. What you see is a really good reproduction of the third great wall. There were three different versions of the wall, but the first two have all but disappeared. Most of the third one is still around, but in bad shape and not suitable for tourists to go walking along it. So they rebuild parts of the wall for tourists. Like I said, it’s worth seeing, but I wish that we could have gone to see some of the original parts that are still around.

The summer palace is also interesting, but it is also a reproduction. The original was burned to the ground (twice), but they have rebuilt it for the tourists. I think that growing up around Williamsburg has ruined me when it comes to reproductions of older things, I just can’t get into them. This wasn’t even all that old, the last time it was rebuilt was around the 1890’s I believe…

Then we went to the Ming dynasty tombs. The tomb area is a lovely park with a stately walkway lined with stone statues of animals and people. There is only one tomb out of 13 that has been excavated. All sorts of priceless ming dynasty items were recovered, but most of them were lost, stolen, or destroyed by the red guard during the cultural revolution. The tomb itself is impressively big, but not much to look at, just grey walls, and some really big doors. I thought the museum was much more interesting than the tomb itself.

The opera was a really amazing experience. It was entitled “8 immortals cross the sea.” The story as I understand it is that 8 Taoist immortals go to a feast and get really drunk, they are called home and they decide to cross the sea using their magical powers. This upsets a fish fairy for some reason (I think they were churning up the water) and they get into a shouting match, then they fight. That’s about all I could make of the story, I have no idea who won the fight, they fought and fought, and then it ended. The whole thing lasted a little over an hour, the fighting probably took up 35 minutes of it. Lots of acrobatics, lots of spear hacky sack techniques (people would throw spears at the woman playing the fish fairy and she would kick them to other people or to herself, she would kick from behind her back, in front, etc, and she would catch behind her back, laying on the ground, etc. Quite an amazing performance. The music was a bit tough to listen to. Peking opera does not seem to place importance on the things that western music is based on like harmony and melody. It’s a bit discordant and screechy. Still, it’s something that you should check out if you ever get the chance.

After we got out of the opera, we went to dinner and then we did what has to be my favorite thing so far, we went to a reflexology place. We had done quite a bit of walking that day and our feet were tired and a little sore. It was really amazing to see everyone bow to you as you walked through the place, there must have been 10 people saying “Ni Howw” (Hello or welcome in Mandarin) and bowing to us. FIrst they take off your shoes and socks and put them in hot water with various herbs in it and let your feet soak. It takes 15 or 20 minutes for your feet to soak, so in the meantime, they work on your shoulders, arms, and neck. Everyone got a masseuse of the opposite gender, the woman who had me was a cute, petite thing with fiercesomly strong hands. I would hate to have to receive a strong handshake from her, she’d crush my hand like a grape. Like all therapeutic massages, there were some decidedly painful parts, but it was all worth it. After they were through doing our upper body, they took our feet out of the water, rubbed some cream into our feet and went to work on them. Man oh man did it feel good/hurt like hell. On both the upper body and the feet, they did several press and hold techniques that were quite uncomfortable, but felt incredible once they stopped. Anyway, we were all quite relaxed and happy by the end of it, it took a little over an hour. It cost the grand total of around 24 bucks per person plus tip, it was well worth it, I’ll probably do it again before I leave…

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The 2nd day was the first one with the tour guide. We went to Tianimen square and the forbidden palace. Tianimen is big, really big. It’s just a square with a few things on it. Mao’s mauseleum, the parliment building, and a museum. It is of course the sight of the student protests 10 years ago or so. There is a heavy police contingent, both uniformed and plain clothes, to prevent any more protests from breaking out.

The north side of the square has the gate to the forbidden city across a huge street. The forbidden city is really, really big. It’s over 1 kilometer long, and around 600-700 meters wide. This had to be one of the more impressive sights I have ever been to. I’m not usually much into tourist things, but I am really glad that I saw this. Most of the buildings have just been refurbished (there are two still undergoing renovations) and they look spectacular. I’ve got the pictures up, go take a look!

Isaac

Our first day in Beijing was pretty nice.

The first thing we did when we left the hotel was to go to the pearl market. It’s building that houses many different vendors. Each floor seems to have a theme, the first floor was electronics, the second had clothing, and the third was the pearl market. Not sure what was on the 4th, we didn’t go there. Mom bought some pearls at amazingly good prices. The shop keepers were relentless, I wandered around while mom and Rick figured out what she wanted and got the price they wanted. I walked by what must have been 250 shops, every one wanted me to come in or browse. Every one wanted me to buy pearls. I’m starting to understand why the Chinese have done so well in business, they will not let up…

Anyway, we then went to a silk place. They have been around for a long long time. At least part of it is state run, but it wasn’t clear if they meant the entire thing or just the silk farming part. Anyway, they had some really nice rugs (mom really wanted one, it would have been around 4k delivered, but she was sensible and got out) and bedding. I am tempted to get one or more of their silk stuffed quilts. The biggest and heaviest ones were around 75 bucks. They are plain comforters stuffed with silk. We got a really good explanation/sales pitch. He was good enough that I am seriously thinking about getting one. They had lots of rolls of fabric, a tailor, and some really beautiful bedding. I’m not so interested in having fancy silk sheets, but they do look good. They also had some really interesting bedding made from bamboo fibers. It is supposed to be very breathable and durable, but I couldn’t find much other than their display. It felt like a really high grade of cotton. Upstairs they had a bunch of clothes. Most of it was for women of course. The stuff for the guys wasn’t really to my tastes for the most part. I’m not a big fan of wearing the really shiny type of silk. I do like the rougher stuff, but I didn’t see much available there. Both at this silk place and the stuff at the “pearl” place, they seemed to be concerned with price mostly. The clothes were not especially nice in my opinion, but they were very reasonably priced for nice silk. The electronics were mostly junk. I tried out some binoculars, and while they were pretty inexpensive, they really weren’t worth buying. I want to find a place that sells decent stuff, I’m sure that it will still be cheaper than at home.

We then went walking around a series of lakes downtown. Before we went sightseeing, lunch was necessary. The menu was illustrated with pictures thank God. Some things might have sounded OK with the text, but when you saw the picture you ruled it out pretty quickly. A couple of bird dishes were shown that still had the head attached. There were also many dishes that were made of liver, duck webbing, fish heads, cartilage, etc. I wondered where the good parts of the animals had gone and why the restaurant was stuck with the leftovers… I had a chicken dish. The cuts were still on the bone, and they weren’t very good cuts. But the sauce they were in was pretty amazing. There were two whole star anise in there, big hunks of garlic, some sort of stick spice that I couldn’t identify and more. Mom and Rick had a chicken with fruit dish that was very good, wish I had ordered that too…

We went walking around the lakes which have become the new bar area. Everywhere we went (around 3ish) people were trying to get us into their place. We also had to put up with an endless barrage of rickshaw drivers (they use bikes now instead of being pulled by hand). It seems as being short with them and downright rude was the only way to get them to shut up. Like I said, they are relentless when it comes to looking for business. I heard lots of traditional Chinese music like 50 cent, Emenim, the cure, and Bonnie Rait blaring out of the bars… It really looks like the place to be if you like to drink and hang out.

Most of Beijing looks a lot like Arlington, low buildings, lots of shops, etc. There are some differences of course. This place has huge bike lanes, the lane is wider than a regular car lane back home. The main streets are 4 lanes both ways, they can handle a lot of traffic. Many of the busses are electric and run off of suspended wires. Almost all of the vehicles are newish. Our guide explained that people have only really been able to afford cars starting with the last 10 years or so. He said that there are around 3 million cars here with a population upwards of 15 million. That’s not bad actually, but there is a lot of smog. Today was overcast, but the place was incredibly smoggy, mom and Rick went running in the morning and they say they feel like they smoked a pack of cigarettes. Some pictures are up, I mostly took shots around the park we went to, I’ll try to take more general street scenes in the next couple of days.

Well I made it. For the record, catching your flight at 3:30 in the morning is brutal. Last night (this morning?) I counted 27 flights that were supposed to leave within 50 minutes of one another at Dubai. The place was an absolute madhouse, it was like being at a ball game. Long lines for the bathroom, you got jostled everywhere, and there was an amazing amount of noise. Why they decide to do this at 2:30 in the morning is beyond me…

I got no sleep on the flight, but I was rewarded with a view of the Himalayas in the morning. It was strange, I knew that they were huge mountains, they certainly looked like hige mountuans what with the snow and all. My scale was all screwed up though, being up so high played some real tricks with my eye. In any event, they were amazing.

We landed in Beijing and it struck me as a lot like Sana’a, except very green and clean. There is a lot of razor wire, I saw a crew razor wiring an empty lot… Once we landed, the plane kept going and going along endless tarmac. The only reason I knew we had’t gone to Hong Kong was that we didn’t go over any water. We did stop eventually and had to take a bus back to the terminal, an odd arrangement to be sure.

So far Beijing looks like a really nice place. Went to dinner in a rather nice place and had my first Chinese food in China. Rick ordered the Peking duck, can’t miss with that when you’re in Peking. I ordered deep fried pork ribs. Turns out that they were, well, deep fried pork ribs. They were too slippery with grease to use the chop sticks, so I went back to the western utensils. Mom originally ordered a fish dish. In the menu it looked like it would cost around 20 yuan for 50 grams of the fish. We figured that it was some sort of nouvelle cuisine. Well, when the waitress came back and let us know that the fish would be somewhere north of 800 yuan (7.6 yuan to the US dollar), we knew we had misjudged something, Turns out the price was the price per 50 grams. So they weighed the fish to see how much it would actually cost. That was a close call with a really expensive dinner. Everyone enjoyed their meal (although I’m glad I tried the fried pork ribs, I don’t think I’ll be ordering them again), and we wandered around a little. I am going to buy some clothes while I’m here, what better place for inexpensive clothing? Wandered into a mall and I thought I was in Tyson’s II. Dunhill, Givenchey, Hugo Boss, etc. were the kind of stores there. A little bit beyond my range. I’ll keep looking. Turns out we’re going to a Peking opera and all I have to wear are t-shirts and jeans. I hope I can find something spiffier without spending too much.

Well, I’m beat. We’re going to wander around aimlessly tomorrow, hope to take a bunch of pictures and have them up tomorrow night. Now I’m going to get my first decent sleep I’ve had in two days.

I don’t understand tis place. Dubai airport was absolutely dead during the afternoon. Now it’s a little past 12:30 AM and it is packed. It has been this way every time I have been to this airport. Back in the states, whenever I came into an airport (including largish ones like Dulles or National) in the early morning, there was no one there. Here it seems as though nothing happens until 11:30 PM. I don’t know if there’s a technical reason for it (maybe the heat causes problems during the day?), a financial reason, or maybe it’s just easier to schedule at this time of the night, but it sure does seem odd to me.

I have never seen the Dubai airport this dead, I’m really amazed. There are very few announcements and very few people. Maybe I should come here on wednesdays more often… Went down to the duty free area as usual, just to see if anything tempted me. I volunteered to get some whisky for a friend on the way back, so I checked to see if they have that brand, they do. My friend wants some relatively cheap stuff, but they have all sorts of things available here. I don’t really know how the prices compare to back home, but Absolute vodka is about 13 bucks for a liter, and Glenfiddych (sp?) 30 year old scotch is about $180. None of that really tempted me, but they do sell lindt chocolates with various liquers and I think I’ll have to get some of the cognac filled ones… As usual, I stopped in to see, er smell the cologne selection. I wouldn’t say I am obsessed with “good” ones, but I do enjoy them. Got to try some things that I had heard of and intrigued me. A couple from Penhilingons, Love potion no. 9 and Blenhiem bouquet. LP #9 I would have dismissed out of hand because of the relation it has with that awful song. Luckily I don’t like how it smells either. Blenhiem bouquet really intrigued me, it goes on all citrus and pepper, but it dries down to a really stale thing that I don’t like. I tend to like the more “artisanal” fragrance houses and not like the mainstream ones too much. My favorite is an independent perfumer in the US named Dawn SPencer Hurowitz, she sells stuff under the DSH name. I like Villorsi, and some Creeds too. Imagine my surprise when I found out I like a cologne from Dunhill! It’s his original, just called Dunhill for men, and it is a classic scent, and very mainstream and wearable, unlike some of my more, umm, interesting scents:-) I’ll pick some up one of these days…

I understand why people stretch out on the floors here, the lounge chairs are damn uncomfortable. If I were shorter they might be OK, but my legs keep falling asleep from the calves on down. As I was dozing off a few minutes ago, I thought to myself, “God, I stink, what’s up with that, I showered this morning…” Turns out it’s the guy behind me, he’s a little ripe. What else, oh yeah as I was dozing off I realized there was a continious sound. It sounded a little like a waterfall from a great distance but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Well, it’s the AC. It’s 97 degrees here with really high humidity, the AC just runs constantly. I had dinner at McDonalds. I’ve never been much of a fan of theirs. For fast food I’ve always preferred Wendy’s, but I’d never go as far as calling the food from either of those places as “good.” Well let me tell you, the quarter pounder was amazing. I almost went back and got another. This tells me the true level of crap I’ve been eating for the past 6 months. I am going to eat really well this next week or so… Only 9 more hours to go….