At least a couple times each month I take the train down to Tianjin to visit Mandi. Since I've spent so much time making this trip during my time in China I thought I'd post a bit of a travelogue from Wudakou to Tianjin and let you see what it's like on the best leg of the Chinese rail system.

This is my first decision: subway (station pictured above) or cab? 20 kuai or 50 kuai? 1 hour to the station or 30 minutes? I chose the cab this time since pictures of the inside of the subway car would get old fast.



The cab heads south on the expressway into Beijing.



We pass the gleaming oval towers of Xizhimen subway station / Beijing North railway station. If only this station had trains to Tianjin :(



The second ring road brings us into the "people who have money" section of west Beijing.



We pass one of the remaining fragments of the Beijing city wall and after a turn keep heading south.



When I pass this pagoda top I know that I'm almost to our exit. Still haven't visited this place on foot but I think it's the Tianning Temple.



Approaching the Beijing South Station, which doesn't look like much from the outside.



The inside is large and spacious, with a lot of capacity for traveler volume to grow. I'm sure it will, especially when this place gets hooked to the subway network.



Everyone boards in a civilized manner.



On the platform. I like how the awning looks like draped fabric.



The business end(s) of the Harmony series high-speed trains. These can run at up to 350+ kilometers/hour (218 mph), and on the way to Tianjin they cruise at 340 kph. 210 mph at ground level is fast.



The interior is nice and bright with a decent amount of space.



Thank goodness for in-flight entertainment (ty Sarah!).



The scene as we accelerate out through the southern suburbs of Beijing towards Tianjin.



Around halfway through the 30 minute trip we pass this large church in the absolute middle of nowhere. Would be curious to know its story. The majority of the landscape looks like this without the church.



For awhile we follow the newly built Beijing-Tianjin (Jingjin) expressway. More unused transport capacity that will probably be one solid traffic jam by 2012 or so. A blurry picture but not much I can do about that.



Ah, back on the platform in good ol' Tianjin again.



We exit the station through the open-air courtyard in early evening.



Looking south over the Hai River. Tianjin's crane index is fairly high.



One of the nice relief depictions of Tianjin's history on the light poles around the station.

So, that's the story. Here are some of the data: the rail line connects Beijing, a city of about 20 million people, to Tianjin's approximately 10 million. It's one of the first truly high-speed legs in China and runs around every 15 minutes on the dot. You can buy tickets up to ten minutes before the trains leave so it's quite convenient to just show up and go. And finally, this is the first leg of the currently-under-construction Beijing to Shanghai line, which will have trains every 15 minutes during peak hours and a total travel time of under five hours. To give you a sense of comparison, that's like leaving Kalamazoo MI at 7am and getting to Atlanta GA before noon, on a train. Not too bad if the ticket prices stay down - they cost a whopping $9 between Beijing and Tianjin.

Here's that long overdue account of my trip with Mandi to Yangshuo in southern China's Guangxi province. This was late in January.

We flew from Beijing to Guilin, with a layover in Xi'an on the way down. Our airline was China Air which I would rate at about Northwest Airlines level. Not awesome but certainly serviceable. We met a fellow foreign traveller on the way down who was here from Spain, so Mandi got a nice opportunity to use her Spanish in person for the first time in awhile. We got in around 9pm and then took a taxi from Guilin to Yangshuo, one hour away by expressway. Even though it was nighttime we could make out the outlines of the limestone karst landscape surrounding us.

To be blunt, it was cloudy the entire week and we had at least two days of rain. This resulted in some truly frozen wanderings around the town and a sub-arctic boat ride up the Li River. But on the other hand, we had a number of really amazing experiences that made the week more than worthwhile.

It was Chinese New Year to begin with, which meant constant excitement in the form of firecrackers, fireworks and lots of "Xinnian Kuaile" (Happy New Year) greetings from the people trying to rip us off. Our hostel was comfortable enough though it tended towards cold in the 45 degree weather. But this was more than made up for by our host's hospitality. The owner asked us to eat dinner with her and some friends on New Year's day which was not only a fantastic southern Chinese traditional dinner but also a nice chance to feel social with some other international guests and Hong Kong Chinese who spoke English. There were two French architects staying with us who were working on the restoration of a Ming-era village which was especially interesting.

Mandi and I took two long bike rides, both times renting nice Giant mountain bikes from our hostel. Yangshuo and the area around it is made up of a networks of streams, rivers and valleys flowing between the vertical karst peaks. This means that one can take some relatively easy, level bike rides while surrounded on all sides by mountains, a unique experience. The roads we biked were built from deep red earth, and they wound through the landscape connected the tiny outlying villages. We rode for hours, taking occasional breaks to eat some crackers or have a drink while shooting photos. Each village was filled with folks dying to say hello to us or at least have a look as we went by, though they seemed to see enough tourists that we didn't really phase them. I stopped and asked for directions quite a few times and, as we made our way onto a river ferry alongside a mass of Chinese without access to improved roads and bridges at the end of our second ride, I felt like I had almost escaped urban China.

Besides that we had some fun events on the side - a visit to a water cave that involved riding a boat in through about two feet of vertical space over the stream and then about an hour of walking inside a fairly large cave, a hike to the top of Moon Hill (a karst peak with a huge circular hole in the mountain) and some delicious if slightly pricy American breakfasts for the first time in ages. Our host always had a supply of "juzi" (Mandarin oranges) ready to be squeezed for juice each morning which made the most intensely delicious orange juice I've ever had. We also took a cooking class with her which was great as I have expanded my repertoire of Chinese dishes from fried rice to fried rice and kung pao chicken. Although, we did write down a few more interesting recipes that I've not yet tried to reproduce without assistance.

The town of Yangshuo itself was fairly packed with tourists, which made the odd looks and calls of "laowai" even more disconcerting - if they see hundreds of white people each day you would think the Chinese in Yangshuo might eventually stop noting it, but I guess not. But it also had some less frequented parts, especially across the river. Mandi and I spent one morning just walking past all the New Year's decorations and seeing how many characters I recognized and then could teach to her. The winding lanes, bridges, pools and parks all helped the rather small area of the city feel dense and full of things to see, and the views of the peaks overshadowing the town added to the borderline-claustraphobic effect.

Anyway, my apologies again for the delay - hope you enjoy some of the pictures below. Highly recommended if you are ever in China, especially during a warmer part of the year!

Moon Hill, where we took a good couple hours to hike all the way to the top above the "moon" and back down.



A fun house on the river in Yangshuo.



By far the prettiest part of the cave we visited.



This is how most of the countryside looked, though we saw all sorts of places where everything from cabbage to oranges were still growing. The rice paddies were taking a rest.



I consult the map on one of our all-day bike excursions.



Overused narrator introduction: "China, a nation of contrasts. Where the ancient and the modern exist side by side." etc.



We saw lots of oxen, still the animal of choice for these farmers.



At Chinese New Year, all the families decorate their doors like this. The banners just have wishes for prosperity and so on in the new year. Note the candles burning.



Oxen swimming across the river. I asked their owner where they were going as he stood and watched them swim alone out into the water. "The other side of course."



A picture from atop one of the peaks in town.



The sun only came out for two hours but at least I got this picture.



Delicious citrus fruit even in the winter.



Crowded West Street, the main drag for tourists and diners in Yangshuo.

It's hard to believe that it's March 21 already. We're about to pick classes for the final module here at IUP, take one last week-long break at the beginning of April and then it's a sprint to the end of the year.

Things in China are still going along as well as ever. As I get in view of the end of my program I realize both how much my Chinese has improved and how far it still has to go. I certainly couldn't have understood my cabbie's rant about corrupt officials when I got here. I also have more and more frequent occasions on which I can pick up a book and just read it. This sounds ridiculous for the fifth year of a foreign language but it's been a real struggle getting to the point where a few unknown characters don't sink my entire attempt at comprehension. To quote a Michigan Political Science professor on the subject of learning Mandarin - "the first ten years are the hardest." I guess I'm doing fine for only having reached year five.

Speaking of Political Science, for anyone who I still haven't talked to I'm happy to report that I was accepted to George Washington University in Washington, DC for the PS doctoral program. So that's where I'm headed in August. Very very pleased with the result - GW is one of the foremost places in the country for people studying China and Chinese politics especially.

As far as upcoming things here, I'll be headed down to Nanjing (my favorite Chinese city!) in May with IUP and perhaps on one other trip with Mandi in June. Not sure where to yet. I realize I still haven't posted anything about our trip in January (!) but maybe you'll see that in the near future. I'm also hoping to take advantage of these last couple months and get around to some of the less-travelled stuff in Beijing that I haven't made time for to date, some of the museums, neighborhoods and so on that no one visits unless they live here.

Finally it is certainly interesting being in China at the moment. This year marks the anniversary of such events as Tiananmen Square (20th), Reform and Opening (30th), crushing of Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule (50th), establishment of the People's Republic (60th) and the May 4th student protest movement which is critical in Chinese history (90th). And the Chinese are a people who pay a lot of attention to anniversaries. Anyway, we started the year with non-stop coverage of "30 years of reform and opening" and are now on to continuous articles regarding the harmonious self-administrative region of Tibet. We'll see if anything happens in June, but since the latest person (a soldier in Tiananmen that year) to call for a government re-appraisal of the events of 1989 was chucked in jail I'm not expecting much in the way of commemoration. But these events, combined with the ongoing events of the economic crisis, Chinese prodding of the Obama administration and so forth is certainly a ripe time to hear the views of Chinese people, occasionally with less filter than usual.

Oh, and at this very moment I am being serenaded from across the courtyard by a sort of zither sound along with a guy singing what sounds like an arrhythmic cross between the Islamic call to prayer and Peking Opera. Just so you know.

So, while a post regarding the trip to Yangshuo sits half-finished, I decided to upload some older pictures that I hadn't gotten to share. The first few are from last October's trip to Luoyang in Henan Province, south of Beijing. I took that trip to see the Longmen Grottoes with the other IUP students wrote a bit about it in an earlier post. The next set are from my trip with Mandi to Xi'an in November, where we toured the city and got to see the Terra-cotta Warriors. Finally, there are a couple extras from Tianjin. As always, click to enlarge.

So, the Longmen Grottoes. This area consists of thousands of carvings of Buddha, some as old as 1,500 years. It's suffered a bit through history but I still found it a very impressive and, in my experience, unique religious site. There are said to be over 10,000 hand-carved figures here, and I find it easy to believe (although some are quite small!)

A slew of empty niches. Many were stolen in the 19th century to fill Western museums, while a second round of destruction and defacement took place during the Cultural Revolution.



Some of the much larger figures in the largest "niche." Note the beheaded statues - the work of the Cultural Revolution.



A longer view from a bridge across the Longmen river. The niches extend all the way to the bridge in the distance.

Next we have a few pictures from Xi'an. Xi'an, along with Nanjing, is perhaps the most famous former capital of China having hosted numerous dynasties under its former name of Chang'an, Eastern terminus of the Silk Road. The city is notable for being one of the few in China to have retained the city wall that all major cities originally possessed, integrating it with the rapidly modernizing city and creating a second tourist draw besides the Terra-cotta Warriors. The Warriors were buried alongside the Emperor Qin Shihuang, first Emperor of China and the first to unite the various warring kingdoms in 244B.C. We took an hour long bus ride to reach the sloping fields in which they were discovered by a well-digging farmer.

The pollution was awful the entire time we were there. This view is from the wall towards the city center at the train station.



The wall extending into the smoggy distance. A park has been created in the space between the wall and the outer moat, and together the effect is to create a very distinct "old city" in the heart of Xi'an. I appreciate much more what Beijing lost during the 1950's and 60's, when the wall was destroyed to build subway line 2. We did get to ride around the entire circuit on rented bikes, which took about two hours and was delightful.



A vendor cooks up some delicious fried fare on Hui Min Jie (lit. Hui People Road). The Hui are an ethnic minority descended from Muslim traders who came to China in earlier eras, and today they are found throughout China. Xi'an, though, is something of a Hui capital, with a large mosque and entire Hui district. They make delicious food and wear distinctive white caps, barely visible in this photo. Mandi and I spent a long evening wandering this road and sampling every kind of (cooked!) snack.



A view of one of the smaller pits of Terra-cotta Warriors. Three main digs can be visited, and this is a small part of by far the smallest. We were disappointed not to be able to get closer to the figures, though a few are on display in cases around the viewing platforms.



The main, airplane-hanger sized dig. Truly incredible.

And last, lots of thing have happened in China besides travel. I've had a birthday, Christmas, Chinese New Year and lots of the daily occurrences that make life abroad interesting. Only two such pictures for today though, sorry!

This is a picture from my birthday dinner with Mandi at a Vietnamese restaurant in Tianjin :)



And finally, Tianjin at its showy best near the train station. Taken on a Fall evening some weeks ago.

As promised, a (first?) post with a bit more depth about my time in Oliver's hometown of Sunwu, Heilongjiang Province.

I'll begin with the material. The apartment was fairly average as Chinese apartments go - two bedrooms, a small living room, one bath and a kitchen with two-burner gas stove. While I was there, Oliver and I shared one bedroom while his parents and grandmother shared the other. The running water was out of wack meaning the bathtub was in service as the main reservoir for the house, but other than that it was great. You can check out the pictures below. And as I said before, his mom made us some great food. A typical day began with a breakfast of zhou (rice porridge, better than it sounds) or soft boiled eggs alongside the abundant leftovers from the previous day. For lunch and dinner we had food that ran the gamut of Chinese cuisine - spicy doufu, small meat+veggie balls called wanzi, peanuts, doufu skin (sort of a noodle consistancy) stir-fried with vegetables, chicken dishes, dumplings and so forth. All of this eaten with a big mantou bread roll in the left hand, much better than the rice those southern Chinese like so much :) In the evening, I sat around watching Chinese TV dramas while talking with his family and munching sunflower seeds. All in all I couldn't have been happier.

The first thing you might notice upon walking out of Oliver's apartment building would be the huge pile of coal directly beside you, being shovelled towards the burner by a middle-aged Chinese guy caked in black dust. Walking between a local noodle shop and another apartment building, one emerged onto a street lined up and down with folks selling their wares - fruit, meat, doufu, mantou (bread), and a dazzling array of Spring Festival fireworks and decorations. The town of Sunwu was, like most places I've seen in China, a microcosm of the country's rapid devlopment. Here stood about eight to ten main blocks with multi-level buildings, apartments, restaurants and businesses, and then right across the street (inhabited) wooden shacks slanted sideways from the wind. Oliver told me how he had lived in one such home for most of his lifetime, only moving into their small but comfortable apartment about eight years ago. As I walked past the alleys leading between these dwellings towards the edge of town, I inhaled air thick with the taste of coal-smoke from each family's individual coal stove. Within hours wiping my nose left a black streak on the tissue.

One of the things that strikes an American suburbanite is the definition found in many cities abroad. After a ten minute walk, we literally reached an edge to the city - a last row of houses, a fence, and then fields and forest beyond. Here was no lingering infection of farmland and forests by occasional housing developments or newly minted retail strips, but rather a stark demarcation of town and country. The landscape reminded me a bit of Michigan, with low rolling hills and lines of trees breaking up the fields, but a farmer driving his herd of oxen across the snow quickly dispelled the image. We made our way up a low rise no more than a kilometer from town and I looked out upon a path in the snow that continued to the horizon. Turning back, I was faced with a simple memorial to those Chinese who died fighting Japan during the Second World War, dedicated in both Chinese and Russian to the heroes who fought "for socialism and to liberate the nation." The squat obelisk stood over a handful of weatherworn tombstones. At the foot of a second nearby marker commemorating the dead of the Chinese Civil War, a few scattered ashes of paper offerings mixed with the snow. Even with Oliver and some other Chinese students nearby, it seemed a lonely place.

That came out longer than I expected so I'll wrap up here with an intent to finally get around to viewpoints and what people were like in a future post.

Oliver models the living room.



Dinner, though sadly this picture is of the one meal we ate at his house that was takeout. Some sort of egg casserole in foreground with doufu behind.



On the streets of Sunwu.

The edge of town.



The long and winding road.

After a long absence from blogging, plenty to report.

In China the main holiday of the year is Spring Festival (or Chinese New Year), falling sometime in January or February according to the vagueries of the lunar calender. In practical terms this means that I have a month off, from January 10 to February 10. The Chinese certainly know how to take a vacation. This is also the big traditional family holiday, when hundreds of millions of people overwhelm all available transport trying to get home. It's like a three week Thanksgiving with four times the people.

I had two great opportunities during this break - the first, and subject of the post, was a trip with my Chinese friend Xu Fengming (Oliver) to his hometown of Sunwu. It's a town of about 70,000 people way up in China's northeastern Heilongjiang Province, part of the Manchuria region, and only around two hours from the Russian border. Other than being my esteemed friend's hometown, it also has the distinction of being incredibly cold and a long way away by train.

We started off with no-seat tickets (Spring Festival's influence) on an eight-hour train from Beijing to Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang and the main city of China's northeast. We took a couple "dunzi's" to sit on and blocked the doorway for the rest of the trip. Harbin is an interesting place - it was originally developed as a modern city under Russian control in the early twentieth century, and the influence still shows in architecture, especially the lovely exterior of the St. Sophia Church in the middle of town (picture below). There are also plenty of Russian goods stores around, selling various imported or purported-to-be-imported items from military binoculars to Russian chocolate. Anyway, the main draw in Harbin besides signs of Russia is the annual ice festival, with ice sculptures around various parts of the city and a huge "Ice & Snow World" set up across the river with scaled down recreations of things like cathedrals, castles, famous bridges etc. Impressive and a lot of fun if you bring enough warm clothes.

After two nights in Harbin we got on an evening train bound for Heihe on the Russian border, with a stop in Sunwu at 4:50am. Originally we had hard-seat tickets which were a recipe for disaster - people crammed six to a row on plastic bench seats, bi-level, sort of like a bad public bus but one in which everyone has luggage and the racks can only hold one third of it. Add to that all the no-seat ticketholders who are standing in the aisles or between rows of seats and it gets very uncomfortable very quickly, much less when one's schedule is 9:30pm - 4:50am under the flourescent lights. Just about the time I had started to sweat through my t-shirt a stewardess came by offering upgrades unused bunks in the sleeper cars which Oliver nabbed for us, making things a lot more comfortable. Deus ex machina.

At 5am we stumbled out onto the absolutely deserted streets of Sunwu, temperature about -10 degrees Fahrenheit, and made our way to Oliver's family's apartment. His mom and dad were waiting for us with the door open at the top of stairwell - gotta love Chinese hospitality. My stay there was a highlight of my time in China so far, a chance both to experience a side of China that I had never seen in Beijing, Tianjin or Shanghai and my first opportunity to really spend some time with a Chinese family. And besides all of that I got to eat real homecooked food for three days - I have never experienced such deliciousness in China, and let me admit that I have experienced a lot of deliciousness here. I also got to meet some local English students that Oliver tutors, play basketball with some of the locals at the town gym and walk out into the countryside to "snow-battle." Very fun. Oliver's family was great, and once I got a bit more used to the northeastern accent we were able to communicate reasonably well. My thanks though to my friend for occasionally translating (native) Chinese to (simple foreigner) Chinese!

So, there's the narrative part of the story. Enjoy the pictures below. I will post more with some of the more interesting thoughts and events from that trip soon (I swear!), along with some info about my recent trip with Mandi to Yangshuo down south in Guangxi Province.

St. Sophia Church in Harbin.



Awesome Chinese shaokao (barbecue) - wings, kebobs, grilled bread etc. And Oliver texting.



Ice festival at night.



Another nice ice sculpture.



Our awesome "seats" on the train from Beijing to Harbin.