adsventuresinchina

Finally getting through a ton of random shots from phone and cameras. These were taken on campus.

Fruit stands here never disappoint though we do worry about pesticides (as much, or more, than we do at home).

These guys live just around the corner from our building and can be heard every morning.

I walk this stretch almost daily, on the way to or from the west gate. It’s Brooklyn-ish and so is my “A Tree Grows in Chengdu” walk…

Political activist Zhang Lan

The Man

Early March before the little pond came to life.

Love the graphic (woodcut/papercut?) on this construction site poster

South of campus along the river

A typical bike pile…

View from the pedestrian cross over. The university’s west gate is near those buses on the right.

Looking the other way from the same pedestrian cross over. This is the crossover to get to Trustmart, our local grocery store.

Another shot of the boys. They are growing on me.

This campus is a mix of really old and marginally “new.” Many of the older building are occupied by former, retired professors.

Coffee shop downstairs from our apartment.

Many little shops like this on campus.

And many cafeterias. We’ve not managed to get dining cards and so can’t eat there.

ROTC (equivalent)

Random Cath Kidston pillowcases…

Give a woman a patch of dirt…

Art’s and my (but NOT Elle’s) favorite noodle/dumpling spot on campus.

Used MBA and MPA books.

The DVD man. Cost? $1.24 each.

There are two elementary schools on campus. They’re not lab schools, but are somewhat “affiliated.”

This is the building where Art teaches and has an office. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the building that his dad taught in for 40 years at Fresno State.

An example of the newer “architecture” on campus

Our street.

The “A-B-C” building just outside the front door of our building. We walk through here every morning to get to the north gate.

Everywhere.

There are two tracks here; this one is great on Sunday afternoons. Everyone doing their own thing, and lots of league (soccer and cricket) games.

I do my laps with these guys. 🙂

This guy is character. Fun to watch him coach the local kid’s running club.

This boy? Same hair color, jaw line, long limbs as my Kitten… like looking at her sibling or cousin.

In all the world, there are no cuter babies than in China. I resist photographing them (so as not to alarm their parents) but my goodness they are something.

On the way to dinner the other night…

Many (MANY!) more pictures to post. Just need more time and stronger internet…

The Wall.

Hard to capture just how steep some sections are. It’s quite a haul.

Day 2.

One of my favorite quilt images of the trip:

The not too long hutong.

Love the spokes on this bike! All of it, actually.

Plastered 8. One of our favorite shops in Beijing.

How I lusted over this beautiful, shiny Flying Pigeon. But how to get it home…

The Legendale looking good in the sunshine.

Schmancy place. It was built for the 2008 Olympics. Half of it now closed up and left empty.

With stainless steel cars in the lobby showroom.

And live scorpions on a stick, just around the corner in the Wangfujing night market.

After Shanghai we flew to Beijing for a quick 3-day visit to walk old paths from 2011. Our plans were really loose. Once we’d made the decision to actually go to Beijing, I think we were mostly just looking for a way to get on with it. To simply be where we had been, as four. To have a look around and see what was real.

It’s true you can’t go “home” again. Or, you can. I sort of I braced myself for it, but there was no need. The Renmin campus was smart and tidy, so fresh, so refreshed in fact, it was one big sigh of relief to see. There were new doors on our old apartment building, fresh paint on a couple of buildings, a fancy new, covered farmer’s market, smooth, clean sidewalks and a newly paved alley to the little market where we used to go for toilet paper and potato chips. There were a slew of grannies watching babies in strollers where the kids used to play after school. Rows of dusty bikes just as they always were. The place looked great, and felt peaceful.

I walked two slow laps around the red track, thinking about my endless morning “training” sessions there, how I would start off with 25 fen (tiny aluminum coins, kind of like micro-pennies, they are roughly 1/6 of a penny) in my left pocket, transferring one to my right pocket every time I completed a lap. A funny thing to do, but I kept losing count of my laps and didn’t have a fitness app in 2011. The track. That was the emotional spot for me. I knew back then that I was deliberately “training,” I just didn’t know for what.

We’d thought we might hang around on campus for a while and have lunch at the Angel Restaurant, but there was nothing left for us at Renmin. It had only been our home for five months–no time at all–but it was the last home, the last “time” we knew together as a healthy, happy family of four on top of the world, and I needed to be there one last time.

When we’d seen enough, we walked to the subway station and rode the now fully completed and much more crowded #10 line out to Beitucheng. We took our time through the park (the blossoms! the yoga ladies!) and down into the Anzhen Xili neighborhood. Parked ourselves on a bench for a while near the public school and the statue of Confucius and sat there for as long as felt right. Then wandered over to beloved BISS, the sweet little school that was such an important part of our lives in Beijing, stalling by the front gates and side playground. In this case, the building itself, the windows and all the international flags flying outside looked grimy. Not so fresh, and not cheerful and vibrant as it is in my memories. Far across the playground there were high school students outside for PE, but right there in front of us, through the fence bars, was the track where Cece won her gold medal in the long jump. She was eight and a half years old then. My God.

That school was an oasis for our family in 2011. All real. As were we.

And that, was it.

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For the rest of our time in Beijing there was sunshine. Not much to say. We were casual and in no hurry. Walked the Forbidden City with the masses, then Art’s favorite hutong Nanluogu Xiang (which we call the Not Too Long Hutong), and lastly, spent our final day on a Viator/Urban Adventures “tour” of the Wall (risky, because we’d bought it randomly online, but it was perfect). Our group consisted of our guide Karen (a chipper, mom of two girls), a young couple from London in their second week of three months traveling the world, a retired-Navy-officer-turned-United-flight-attendant from Chicago, and a petite tax accountant from Kuala Lumpur who was heading that weekend to North Korea to run a marathon. Plus the three of us. Lucky. We were thrilled (relieved!) to have such a pleasant and interesting little group to spend our last day (ever) in Beijing with. This tour took us to the Mutianyu section of the wall, about an hour and 45 minutes outside of the city. Perfect weather, no crowds, and this time, after three hours of walking the wall we all lined up and rode the toboggans to the bottom. No pictures, no ‘proof’ of that, but there was hooting (!) and everyone wanted to do it again.

When our van arrived back in Beijing at 5pm, I told Art: I’m good. Full up. Done with Beijing.

Odd collection here, but for what it’s worth, this was our quick dip back into Beijing (with hardly any of Elle, I know. Not for lack of trying!)

I’m finding that the only way to get these pictures uploaded is via small mosaic groupings. If they appear fuzzy, click on individual picture and then “View full size” in lower right.

Sunny Shanghai on Tomb Sweeping Day. April 4, 2016.

Finally. A successful upload of spring break pictures! VPN slips in and out, daring me to try and upload. Photos that I swear have uploaded disappear from the media files. Oof da. I continue to try again.

It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon here. Elle is working on homework, while Art’s across campus in his office preparing for the week ahead. I’ve got laundry spinning in our little Whirlpool twister, and “to do” lists going on my desk. At this point (mid April), we are set, settled and staying put in Chengdu until school lets out in June. Art has a few Fulbright-related trips to make, and Elle has a class trip, but aside from that, we don’t have any more family trips for a while. Routine, routine. We work well this way.

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Shanghai is a combination of rich history and ultra modern transformation, and a very hip energy in every direction. Divided by the Huangpu River, there’s distinguished Puxi and the French Concession on the east side (the “old” side) and on the west is shiny Pudong with its extraordinary modern skyline and screaming nighttime light displays. In particular, there is Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China, and 3rd tallest in the world (maybe it is the second tallest in the world; conflicting reports abound). It’s a building that barely existed when we gazed at that skyline in 2011, and actually sort of does not exist right now because although it has been “complete” for nearly a year, it has not yet opened. And I cannot find the reason why. But it does exist, and at least from the outside, it is exquisit.

Art couldn’t take his eyes off of the skyline or that Shanghai Tower. Here. See this. Really. It explains a lot: Shanghai Tower time-lapse!

You can’t visit Shanghai without walking along the Bund (more than once) or taking a Huangpu River cruise. For us, we also couldn’t visit Shanghai without staying at the Astor House Hotel, nor without visiting the beloved Blue Nankeen Textile Gallery.

I guess there are a million other, better, reasons to visit Shanghai, but we’re easy. The funky old hotel where we stayed in 2011 (with Chinese breakfast buffets in the Peacock Room), walking along the Bund (especially at night), a stunning river cruise under sunny skies, the Tianzifang alleys on a rainy afternoon, Blue Nankeen, and Yuyuan Gardens/Huxinting Tea House on Tomb Sweeping Day. Pretty umbrellas, peonies bursting everywhere, sunshine. Western food at Element Fresh and the Bund Brewery because we needed it.

I’ve slowed down on picture-taking, and on trying to write about our adsvenstures, trying to work instead on other essays. On walking. And taking care of our days. For now though, here are my Shanghai memories, starting with Blue Nankeen. (Note: I didn’t get many pictures of the actual textiles at Blue Nankeen. Eh? What’s with that?). And it was raining on the morning we visited, so there were no blue fabrics flapping on the clothesline outside, but still my heart fluttered as we made our way down the pebbled alley to this surprising little shop/museum. It was just exactly as I remembered it, including the endearing man and woman who run the place, and who posed with us again.

Note: I think pictures can be enlarged by clicking. Also note: that bicycle hasn’t moved in five years.

The internet blinked over here and the entire post I’d written (including all of the pictures uploaded) about our actual day on sacred Mount Emei vanished.

Not worth rewriting, but trying again to post pictures.

p.s. We never saw any of the wild monkeys we’d been warned about, nor did we make it to the very top (Golden Peak), but enjoyed our rainy Saturday on the lower half of the mountain.

A crazy bus ride up, then a cable car up further, followed by several hours of stone paths and steps down…

With stops like this along the way…

Short notes from a weekend.

Elle’s school was on holiday for Good Friday and Art doesn’t teach on Fridays, so we woke early and got out of town for Easter weekend to continue celebrating Art’s 65th birthday. Destination: Leshan, Emeishan, and comfy hotel beds.

The Leshan Giant Buddha is part of the Mount Emei UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s more than 1200 years old, and sits 230 feet high… carved into the side of a cliff. Mount Emei (Emeishan) is one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains, with many temples and monestaries on and around it, including the Golden Peak at its top, and Dafo Temple (the Great Buddha Temple) in the town. The mountain itself is lush and wet, smokey. Mysterious. With winding wet paths and stairs made of thick dark stone, and cable cars for quick ascents. For multiple reasons, including trepidation, we did not make it to the Golden Peak (where, we heard from a German couple, there was quite a snowpack plus dense fog).

We had little knowledge of these places beforehand, but it seemed like a good weekend plan. And it was. Aside from the rain, and a strange and stomach-lurching ride halfway up the mountain in a crowded old bus, it all worked out great. Art and I would actually go back again (Elle has no interest) to truly tackle Mount Emei, which requires at least two dedicated full days: one to trek up to the top of the mountain, and the other to get back down.

Both cities are accessible via high speed trains out of Chengdu. These trains make me weep for the U.S. and our inability to get it together, infra-structurally and politically, to bring our train travel game up to par with the rest of the modern world. It really is such a nice way to travel.

Tiny little customer service windows at the station are weird, but everything else is first rate. I’d booked us into business class because first class was sold out, and I wasn’t sure we’d get seats together in second class, plus business class tickets were just $23 each, plus birthday celebration, so why not.

Elle is, seriously, a very helpful travel companion. She’s observant, and quick, and often figures things out before we do. Handy!

We ended up having the entire business class capsule (five seats) to ourselves.

Cute snack boxes on these trains, just like in Europe, but with spicy bamboo shoots and fragrant rice chips in place of the Haribo gummi bears.

A very quiet and smooth (thanks to maglev trains) 90-minute ride to Emeishan City.

This is what you see out the window (Yes, blurry. Because 195 km/hour. And gray. Because rain. And because China.). Sichuan is one well-planted province (with over 80 million people to feed in this province alone), and those bright yellow flowering crops? Rapeseed.

Like any train ride through the countryside, it’s frequently breathtaking, but impossible to fully capture…

And the rapeseed is just vibrant. See this: http://mashable.com/2016/03/23/rapeseed-royal-robe/#WnyxozVq95qs

After checking in at the Anantara we cabbed over to Leshan to see the Giant Buddha. Wires were crossed and we miscommunicated. This can happen. We ended up on a boat, viewing the Buddha from the water with an enthusiastic group of Chinese tourists, and not ever actually getting over to the climb the steps burrowed into the cliff around Buddha. The boat viewing, however, turned out to be just exactly enough for us. If we decide we can’t live without climbing those steps, it’s easy enough to get back to Leshan on a future Saturday.

While we waited to “sail” to the Buddha, we spied a sweet kitten on the next boat over. Go figure. I’m becoming a cat person. This makes Elle happy.

This is the Min Jiang (or, Min River) looking surprisingly similar (albeit murkier) to the Monongahela in Homestead, PA.

There it is, just behind/above Art’s head.

Afterward, we spent several very quiet hours exploring the Dafo Temple of Mount Emei.

This temple is ancient, stoic… lovingly well kept. In fact, there were so many pots of miracle-grow-bright new flowers lined up everywhere, and everything had been swept so spotless, that I think it was being readied for an event. Though we found it eerily quiet on the day we were there. Aside from a few people in the entryway shops, and a few others scattered here and there, we felt nearly alone in the place. It took us two hours to walk from one end to the other. Mostly in silence. Finally found a few tour groups at the end.

Mount Emei is the home of the Bodhisattva of Universal Benevolence (or Universal Virtue). He is often seen with an elephant… and was one who “practiced what he preached”… with ten vows for leading a virtuous life.

Elle loves these sugar art creations on sticks (think hot honey dripped into shapes, then hardened). Public spaces everywhere in China (including temples) have them, so a “regular” thing for her…

A new Bodhisattva prayer bead bracelet on his wrist.

To be continued…