Happy 4th of July Everybody

Does China have a fourth of July? Of course it does and it is today. Unfortunately, they aren't celebrating the day in the fashion I am used to--bbq with friends, time at the lake, or something equally fun. I won't let that hold me back though. We ran into some American students at our hostel last night and they asked about our plans for the day. I'm on vacay so of course I have no plans. They suggested we must 'represent' and get together on the beach and indulge in some American-style fun. I am sure Chinese firecrackers will be involved. Ironic...

40 Reasons Why My Folks Are Awesome

Hi Mom and Dad- Happy Anniversary! I am sorry to not be there with you this year, especially considering the momentous milestone. Forty years together is amazing! I want you to know that I love you both and appreciate all you have done to make our lives happy and fulfilled. I am proud to have parents like you who have supported me through all my crazy endeavors. Most of all, you have set a great example for both Chris and I. Way to go on reaching the big 4-0. We will celebrate as soon as I get home and recover from jet lag. Love you both- Dawny

Brief Glimpse at Shanghai

Here are a few shots of Shanghai (sadly I didn't shoot much in this city). One of the interesting places I did get to see was the Oriental Pearl Tower. It is the 3rd tallest radio/TV tower in the world. There is an observation deck at the top that has a plexi-glass floor. It freaked us all out a bit but we walked on it anyone, making the assumption that the construction must be sound. I am not sure why we assumed this since we had seen some funny construction practices throughout our journey. In Beijing, for example, we watched crews plant electric poles throughout a neighborhood and then just fill in the hole around the pole with only dirt--no cement. The day after we braved the Pearl Tower's glass floor we saw that a building in Shanghai had fallen over. It did not collapse- it simply fell over. Check it out.

An Apple a Day Helps When I Am Away

One of my favorite things about my Mac is the iChat program. I have been able to video chat with Noel at least once a day (when the internet is happy) which makes the time away a lot easier to bear. I got to chat with him one day while he was with his family. Here is a Garcia family portrait I took that day.

Swine Flu Be Damned!

Did I mention the precautions the Chinese are taking to avoid swine flu? It all started in LA where I had a 5-hour layover on my way to China. Almost every Chinese person in the international terminal was wearing a surgical mask. The biologist in me scoffed a bit at this and wondered if they actually believed their surgical masks would protect them from the dreaded swine flu. Some of the masks looked pretty high tech so I am sure they did their research and found the best possible protection from the looming threat that we now call H1N1. On a side note, it seems a bit ironic that my first trip to China was shadowed by the threat of swine flu when some years ago I almost went to China with Noel for his job and the trip was cancelled due to SARS. Back to the point: my masked comrades and I boarded the plane anyway- swine flu be damned! I must say that you are never more aware of your bodily functions until you spend 14 hours sitting next to a masked stranger who looks at you with dread every time you cough. Forget coughing—try sneezing a hundred times like I do. I thought they were going to make an emergency landing just to get me out of the plane. I can also tell you that 14 hours does not pass quickly in a plane. I have never been so happy to land in my whole life as I was when we arrived in Shanghai. I was so ready to get off that plane but something was not quite right. No one was moving. Then an announcement- no one could exit the plane until they had their temperature taken. I didn’t think they were serious, but let me tell you they were more than serious. Two guys boarded the plane in full hazmat uniforms and some sort of gun-like apparatus.- not kidding. Turns out it was a thermometer that read your temperature by shooting a laser at your forehead, which I must admit was pretty cool. Even cooler was that we were all deemed ‘normal’ and were allowed to enter the country. Woo Hooo! Everyone thought the threat was behind us once we got a few days under our belts in Beijing but on day two of our class our hotel was notified by the Central Government’s Health Department that some of our classmates needed to report their temperature, twice a day for seven days, to make sure they were not infected. These particular students flew out of San Antonio, which the Chinese figured to be a hotspot for swine flu. It all seemed a bit a comical but true. So, the long and the short of it…the image you see here is me, Kelly, and Mike wearing the surgical masks that Mike was given by the government (he was one of the sickies who flew in from SA). The masks were included with a package that include a thermometer, spreadsheet for recording his temp, and surgical masks to wear if he felt so inclined. We all got a kick out of it…thought you would too. Whatever they are doing is working I guess. None of us have swine flu.

On the 8th Day, God Created the Hostel

Big Chinese apologies to my good friends who are following my adventures via the blog. I realize I have been MIA for a while now. I am taking a little vacay now that class is over so I am making it goal to catch up on the blog. I left Shanghai on Wednesday morning (7/1) and took an 18-hour train ride to Qingdao (pronounced Chingdow). I am joined by two classmates, Kelly West and Mike Melanson. Qingdao is a beach town and famous as the home of Tsingtao beer (which coincidentally has become one of my favorite cheap things in China- also pronounced Chingdow). We are doing budget vacay and staying at a pretty cool hostel that used to be a church. Best of all, it is only about $8 a night for each of us. Staying in a former house of God seems to be a trend for me and my travels. I have stayed in either a former convent or church in Puerto Rico, Prague, and now China. I feel like there is a fourth on the list but it is not coming to me right now. Perhaps too much Tsingtao in Qingdao?

Schools Out for the Summer

Well, we are officially done with school. In fact, most of my classmates are already back home in the fabulous US of A. My last week of class in Shanghai was a tuff one. I had a nasty cold that put me out of it for while and then I spent the remaining time catching up on my class work. I didn’t really get a chance to do much reporting in Shanghai (since I was typhoid Mary) so my last two stories I finished in Shanghai were reported on from either Beijing or Xi’An. If you haven’t already, take a look at chinaonthemove.net. I have one written story called A Chance Encounter with the Book of Changes and I created a multimedia piece about a rural farmer named Li. If you go to my travel blog on the class site you will see both of these. These will be my last two big posts on the class website. I am supposed to write some after thoughts and those will go up sometime in the near future. For now, however, consider school out.

While you are at our class site you should also watch the “Where's the Tobaggan” video. This is a chronicle of our (Caitlin, Alice, Kelly, and me) adventures on The Great Wall.

What She Said

As you can see I have not posted much lately. To be honest I am under the weather with a cold and just don't have the energy to think or write about anything other than my chinaonthemove.net stories. My BCF, Kelly, is kicking butt still and keeping her blog up to date while also managing to write story after story. She is pretty awesome. So, for those of you who really want a China update, look at Kelly's blog at chiiina.blogspot.com. This should give you a good idea of what I have been up to lately. I will try to catch up soon. For now I can say that in spite of a cold Shanghai is pretty cool. More later...

This one's for you Dad!

Hi Dad- Sorry I could not get in touch with you yesterday. The internet comes and goes and I couldn't figure out how to load more minutes on my phone to send you a text. I sent an email but not sure if that went through either. Since you and Mom are following the blog I figured a post here would definitely get to you. So, a little late...HAPPY FATHER'S DAY! I COULDN'T ASK FOR A BETTER DAD! I love you and miss you.
xoxo- Dawny

Terracotta or KFC??

We visited the Terracotta warriors recently. They were pretty cool. They were warriors...and they were terracotta- yep, nuff said. If you visit this historical site I suggest you start with Pit 3 and work your way back to Pit 1--it is the most interesting. Or you can be super time-efficient and just visit Pit 1 and then head to KFC outside for an early lunch.

Kung-Fu Panditos

I dig Kung-fu movies (or Wushu as the locals call it)--I am no expert, of course, and my knowledge is pretty much limited to Jackie Chan and Jet Li. For those of you who haven’t seen it, I highly recommend The Legend of Drunken Master. The final fight scene is amazing. Anyway, back to the point…my classmate, Vianey, is doing a story about a wushu academy here and I shot pictures for the story. The story will probably get posted sometime next week, but in the meantime I want to share some of the images with you. They start them young over here. Crouching tiger, hidden youth.

Find My Stuff at chinaonthemove.net

For those of you keeping up with our class website I want to tell you about a cool feature. With one click of the mouse you can look at all the work I have done on this trip. On the right-hand side of the home page, about 2/3 the way down, there is a section called travel blogs. There is a link called Dawn Jones-Garcia’s travel blog. Click on it and you will see all my stuff: articles I have written, multimedia pieces I have created, photo galleries with some of my images, and stories (written by classmates) with photos I have taken. Check it out…everyone is doing great work over here.

My meeting with a farmer

I was fortunate to get an interview with a local farmer while in Beishe on Thursday. This is the sort of activity that I live for when traveling—I love meeting the locals and experiencing a bit of their lives. I only got to spend about an hour with this gentleman talking to him about his crops and life as a farmer. Afterwards, he invited us (my professor, Tracy, and classmates Kat and Liang) to his home for a little while. We were all glad to be there and it was another good reminder that we are indeed foreigners in this land. He was pretty excited to have us at his house and it didn’t take long for news of the Meiguo’s arrival (pronounced May-Gwa, means Americans) to the neighbors. They all showed up to see the strange animals on display. A good time was had by all. I am currently working on a multimedia piece from this interview but in the meantime I figured I would share some images. The last image isn't that great but I want you to get a feel for how hard he works. He tends 3 fields the size of the one his is pictured in--he does everything alone and by hand.

Goin' to the Country

We went to the country on Thursday to get a look at life outside the big city. We visited the village of Beishe, in the Township of Jiaodao, in the district of Chengcheng, in the Province of Shaanxi---what??? Anyway, here are some images from that trip.

Second post to Chinaonthebrink.com

My second story, in the form of a multimedia slide show, is now posted on http://www.chinaonthemove.net/. It is the story about papercutting.

Lunch with Locals

The living room/dining room at Ruby’s house.


Our excellent translator, Hao Zi Duan. She was much better at making dumplings than the rest of us.


Where the magic happens!


Mike Melanson gets schooled by Ruby's Uncle


Another of my classmates, Eva Romero.


That’s me!


Me, again!!


Eight of us accompanied our local guide, Ruby, to her home yesterday where her mother, father, and uncle prepared lunch for us. We had dumplings, which I love. Everyone joined in on the action and tried our hand at making dumplings. This is the second attempt for some of us (see earlier post on 'how to make dumplings') but that didn't seem to help. They were pretty pathetic-looking dumplings. Ruby's uncle is a cook at a local restaurant so, of course, the dumplings he made were fantastic. I really enjoyed the opportunity to get out of the city center and see how the real Chinese live. Both of Ruby's parents are workers at a fabric factory and live in an area appropriately named 'fabric city.' Everyone who lives there works at 1 of the 6 factories in the neighboring area. Her mother is a Quality Control Specialist and her father is a Machinist/Mechanic. They were lovely people and I am happy to have met them. They said we were the first foreign guests they have entertained. I hope we made a good impression.

We are in Xi'An

We left Beijing Saturday night and took an overnight train to Xi'An (pronounced Sea Ann but say the Sea without touching your tongue to your front teeth). We were a little better off than last year's group because we had soft sleepers. This is a train compartment with four soft beds (arranged like bunk beds) and a door that closes so you have privacy from the rest of the train. I love train travel so it was pretty cool. We left at 9:30 pm and arrived in Xi'An at 8:30 am. The trip was nice but I wish I could have seen more of the country-- but that's the way it goes sometimes. Getting on the train with 17 people was a bit chaotic, however, so I didn't take any pictures. I shot some video but uploading it right now will be a real pain in my bootay. I will try later.

These Speak for Themselves

The century egg diet- works like a charm!

My good friend Warren suggested I try a century egg while here. Some of you may know that I have a "I'll try anything twice" rule when it comes to food so when someone in our party ordered a century egg on top of tofu I figured I would give it a try. I sampled just a little nibble and I must say it was foul...no pun intended. I am pretty resilient when it comes to food but this one pushed me over the edge. It was all I could do to keep my cookies down. In fact, it killed my appetite and ruined my meal (which made me sad because I tried the egg before my own dish arrived so my food went untouched). So next time you want to lose a few pounds, try the Chinese Century Egg diet. It worked for me.

Did you get the video? Yes I got the video (that is a reference for you, Chris)

I Can See Russia From My House

Wait a minute-- this bridge to nowhere isn't anywhere near the Palin compound.

One More Item Checked Off The Bucket List

Do you have a bucket list? You know, a list of things you want to do before kicking the bucket. Well, I do. One of the things on my list was to see the Great Wall of China and yesterday I FREAKIN' CLIMBED THE WALL!!!! Alas, one more item checked of the list. I realize this is a very touristy thing to do, but really, you would have to be a complete idiot to travel all the way to China and not check out the Wall (in my humble opinion). It was everything I hoped for. Amazing. Spectacular. I think the stars aligned for us. The weather was beautiful and the sky crisp blue (unusual for Beijing area). There are many places you can visit the wall. The place we went to was about 1.5 hours outside of Beijing. There are three ways to get to the 'top' of this particular location. You can take a gondola or cart-tram thingy and get there in 5 minutes or you can climb it and get there in 1.5 hours. We chose to climb the bitch. It was a hell of a hike but completely worth it. We were joined by lots of tourists (mostly Chinese, some of which wanted a photo with us. Side note--some Chinese appear as if they have never seen an American before. They look at us as if they have just seen bigfoot or something. It makes for some pretty funny interactions. I will try to blog about this later). For those of you who visit the wall, I recommend biting the bullet and climbing it. Unless of course you have bad knees, but then again I was passed by a few 80-year old men who were smoking and walking with cane but whatever. As the saying goes, it is not the destination but the journey that counts. I couldn't agree more in this case. Every huge staircase we climbed revealed a more magical view than the one before. Amazing!! I hope to return one day to an area that is not as crowded with tourists and perhaps spend a few days walking/camping on the wall. It was good for the soul. PS- I recommend climbing on the way up but I won't judge you for taking the easy way down. They have little single-seat cars on rails that you can ride down for 30 rmb. The best 30 rmb I have spent on this trip.

With everything good there must be bad I suppose. The entrance to the wall was a bit like Disneyland with mountain bears on display and vendors selling Great Wall ashtrays, snowglobes, and keychains. Perhaps the saddest thing, however, was the Starbucks at the bottom. Not kidding. Apparently the wall can keep out China's mortal enemies but didn't stand a chance against Seattle.