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.

Adventures in Food

I think food is a definition of culture so when traveling I make every attempt to eat what the locals eat. What's the point of traveling if you eat at Micky D's everyday and don't learn something, right? Many of you have asked me, "is Chinese food in China like the American version." The answer is definitively no (I have not seen a single egg roll)-- it is much better. Perhaps I will elaborate on my love for REAL Chinese food in another post but for now I want to talk about the Night Market in Beijing. Our favorite guide and new friend, Rio, took some of us to the Night Market, which he affectionately referred to as Snack Street. I have been fortunate to travel a bit in my life and an outdoor food market is something I have encountered in almost every country I have visited. In fact, it is one of my favorite destinations...you really get a feel for the local community at these places. I am pretty open-minded about some of the 'strange' things people eat--after all, I am from South Texas and lingua, tripas, and menudo could be considered dreadful by some-- But, this market took it to a whole new level. I broke my own rule here and chose not to sample any of the fine cuisine being offered. I can say the locals really seemed happy to be there though. Next time you are in the market for star fish (1st pic), silkworms on a stick (2nd pic), scorpions and crickets (3rd pic), sheep testies (4th pick), or sea snake (5th pic), or pretty much any other type of mammalian innards, this is your place.