Shanghai, China

The last city on my China trip. Don't worry no more stories about dog meat. And FYI, I didn't eat any.



Shanghai has the whole international feel to it. The Pudong skyline towers above the Yangtze river, shiny and new. The Bund provides a stark contrast to the chicken farms that dotted the side of the highway in Guilin. Suddenly fashion changes from functional to, well... Tokyo. Not as over the top, but much more variety. It was pretty cold in China, so men and women both donned themselves in utilitarian coats. In Tokyo, no matter how cold, girls still show leg and sports high heel boots, and guys still wear 15 pounds of jewelry with skin tight distressed jeans. Shanghai wasn't that wild, but none the less you could tell people cared more about how they appeared. I even found a UNIQLO!



I don't have much to say about Shanghai. Seems like a good place to live. The subway is efficient and only costs about 40 cents to ride. There are western style cafes and huge shopping malls. Some great museums too.











These shots are from the Shanghai Museum. Akin to the National Museum in Tokyo, it was a crash course in Chinese craft and art history. Spectacular.

Also on the agenda was some Chinese acrobats.



Ancient kung-fu style - spinning plates and walking on heads. The plates could be used as weapons against invading mongrels.



Juggling hats. It gets very cold, so people often have to wear more than one hat. Juggling them is just the next logical step.



Super hula hooping. Girl looked like a human slinky.



The mystical art of twirling a red thing on your foot.







The obligatory jumping through hoops.



This wasn't in the show. It's a typical Chinese school bus taking children to learn their three Rs.



It's the hula hoop girl. She rode the motorcycle in a giant sphere with 4 other people on bikes. A very ancient and time honored Chinese acrobatic technique. Hmmm... when I think of "Chinese acrobats" I think of kung-fu and cartwheels. But this was still cool. Except the music was whack. They played the theme from Titanic at one point.



Woke up on the 29th to take my flight home. No ferry you ask? Turns out a last minute flight was cheaper than the ferry - shinkansen trip I had planned. And a 3 hour flight kind of beats the 3 day journey. Plus, this means I get to ride the Maglev! The Maglev is a train that floats on magnets. This means no friction from wheels, which means super high speeds. The Shanghai Maglev cost over a billion dollars US to build, and with current ticket price and maintenance fees it will never recoup the money spent. Oh well.. it was fun to ride.





It took 7 minutes to travel the 30km to the airport. My dad scored some passes to the business lounge, so I spent the next 2 hours eating cake and drinking Asahi Super Dry. What's that? No vomit aftertaste like my acquaintance Tsing Tao beer? And thus ends my adventure to China. I'd like to go back someday, and explore some off the beaten path type stuff. I've got a year on my China visa, so it could well be an option.


Next: I'll write about food and shopping in China. More like rant about shopping and rave about food. Cheers and jeers here people.

Guilin, China

Guilin.

Not really much history to worry about here. Just some beautiful scenery, some good food, and some country style living. About that "country style living" I just mentioned. This is a big fat warning not to click on some links later on if you are squeamish. Seriously, I'm gonna give you another warning when it comes up, but I'm not responsible. If you are a vegetarian or member of PETA, then you've been doubly... no triply warned!



There are 9 horses on the side of this mountain. Can you find them all?

If you've seen a Chinese landscape painting, you've probably seen Guilin. The mountains here are made of limestone, so the rain washes parts of them away, leaving sheer cliffs and lush terraces.



It's strikingly beautiful. We took a flat bottomed boat down the Li river to admire the mountains. We stopped in a town called Yangshuo to spend the night.



Yangshuo is weird. There is a street called "West Street". It's lined with counterfeit clothing shops, bars, cafes, and even a tattoo shop. A little countryside vision of what magical America must be like. And of course massage parlors.



Pervert trivia for you! Massage parlors and barber shops (hunh?) with pink signs = hooray!



Kevin, our hilariously random guide filled me in on that nugget of wisdom.



Ooooohhhh, caves are pretty.



Wow, wouldn't it just be magical to live in a cave like this? Well this is Reed Flute Cave, and during WWII, some number of people in the thousands hid in this cave from the occupying Japanese. They lived here, while on occasion some would go outside under the cover of night to gather food. They were never discovered. Another cave in the area, Seven Star Cave I think, had the same use. It was, however, discovered by the Japanese who decided to gas it. Take that women and children!



This rock looks like an elephant.



This motorcycle has Jet Li on it.

Ok, bye bye.





Still here?




Oh, you want to see some freaky shit?




You sure?



Fine.



Of course there are stereotypes of what people eat. Germans eat sausages. French eat frog's legs. Black people eat watermelon. Mexicans eat beans. What do Chinese eat? Dog of course! So I wasn't too surprised to see dog meat for sale. But this was the countryside market, not built for foreign eyes. So it was a no hold barred murder fest. Buy a chicken at one end, have it slaughtered at the other. Ditto for the dogs. Here's the links if you want to see. The first one is the most profound.

One
Two
Three, safest of the 4
Four

So there you go. Behind the slaughtered canines were cages filled with live dogs. I asked myself why. Not, "Why do the poor doggies have to die." People eat meat, animals die. But I wondered why some animals elicit such an emotional response. I think it's based almost solely on their facial expressions. Dog's show love through their smile, fear with their ear posture, and anger with their teeth. When a dog farts in your presence, he either hangs his head in shame or gives a big fat grin. The still living dogs I saw in those cages had some grim looks about them.






Next: Shanghai, the last stop on my tour.

Xian, China

Go to Shanghai for 100 years of Chinese history.
Go to Beijing for 1000 years of Chinese history.
Go to Xian for everything before that.



Xian, home of the Terracotta Warriors. Unearthed about 30 year ago, it is considered to be the 8th wonder of the world. Andre the Giant was also considered by some to be the 8th wonder of the world. Whatever. It was a bunch of clay soldiers, most standing over 190cm tall. I'm 192cm, and I tower over the average Asian man. So either there were some super warriors 2000 years ago, or the Qin dynasty is a bunch of liers.

Other stupidness involved... the original farmer who discovered the tomb in 1974 is there to sign a book if you buy one. Thats all he does day in and day out. It was so utterly lame, it gave the whole thing a cheap feel to it.



The Wild Goose Pagoda. It was big. A Buddhist temple in the middle of the city.



I took a walk around the block of the hotel one night. It was the most gloomy city scene I've seen before. I remember walking the streets of Okayama, listening to Radiohead's Kid A, in the rain. I thought that was gloomy. But this topped it.

There were few people on the street. Those who were were picking though piles of trash, scavenging for whatever. The plastic, chemicals, and toxic waste that couldn't be salvaged was dumped onto burning trash piles on the sidewalk. Glancing into the garages that served as homes for extended families, you could see the whole group crowded around a static covered black and white TV. Occasionally a dog or cat ran by.

Back to the hotel for some Xian style singin' and dancin'!








Next: Guilin, for mountain views and a river cruise.

Beijing, China

For some reason China Eastern airline's in flight movie was just clips from some Belgium candid camera type comedy show. It fit well with the sealed packs of mystery stink and dried mystery food nee cardboard. I took some pictures of the dinner with my Canon IXY. Curses!



Get off the plane. Take a deep deep breath. There. You've just shortened your lifespan by a year. "Damn, is it foggy?" Nope, thats low lying brownish yellow haze ain't nothing natural. Don't bother with the science experiments, Japan beat you to it! ->Link<-



We started our "Classic China" tour in Beijing. It was to be an 11 day, 5 city tour of China. Being in an organized tour group has ups and downs. Ups like no worrying about anything and meeting some cool people to travel around with. Downs like organized shopping trips to things like phony jade factories and silk shops. Ups like delicious food, downs like way too much of it. I'm talking about forced gorging sessions. Ups like you get to see all the major sights. Some of the major sights of Beijing are:

• The Great Wall
• The Forbidden City
• Tienanmen Square
• The Summer Palace
• Ming Tombs
  

Of course the Great Wall.



Why are my pictures all grainy? The thing about new electronics, is that unless you read the manual (RTFM!) you might set something wrong. I set almost all my photos to ISO 3200 during this trip. If you know about ISO settings, this is like the worst possible scenario. I will talk no longer on this subject.







Official people, last one being our tour guide for Beijing. The locale is Tiananmen Square.



Mao himself. Mao = good? Mao = bad? China was in a very bad place, and it's history is one of greed and corruption. Wars were lost so that emperors could spend the treasury on palaces. Countless lives were destroyed so the court could be risen higher. In more recent times the country was ravaged by foreign invaders, it's people humiliated. The cultural revolution sought to end this, and in a way it worked. But at a price. If you want a unique perspective on it, read Wild Swans, by Jung Chang. It recounts the lives of 3 generations of women before, during, and after Mao.



The Temple of Heaven.



One of the emperor's tombs. The real joy is the walk to the tombs.



Porne House?!?! Porne Elephant?!?! Porne Camel?!?! Show me!



Porne Elephant.



Porne House.



Also a must do in Beijing is to see the Beijing Opera. Why is this a must do? You got me. But seriously... it's totally awesome. You need to go. It's a life altering experience. Just go already. And bring Tylenol.



On the "not necessary" tip is the zoo. You want to see pandas? Don't go here! It's fucking depressing. Next trip to China I will make the trek to the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuary. Have a look at the Beijing pandas and decide for yourself.








Next: Xian, for a crash course in China's last 2000 years of history

Osaka Photoblog

Didn't do much in Osaka, seeing as only half a day was spent there. I spared my father staying in the $15 budget hotel I stayed last time. So we stayed in the Namba area. Shiny shiny Namba.





This guy was filming a video. He was speaking Osaka dialect with a lot of "hard" American hip-hop words thrown in. It was totally presh!







Takoyaki, of course. Hot balls of molten dough with a piece of octopus inside.







Hosts doing their daily nanpa, the Japanese art of picking up girls on the street. Every attractive girl is harassed by them. I watched these 3 hosts, as well as a couple others, for about 15 minutes and none of them seemed very successful. They certainly win with the peacocking, every bit of their style was over the top.










Next: Beijing, the most polluted city I've ever seen.