I got an email from my mom about there being an LL Bean in Beijing, and so of course, I had to find it.  After looking on the internet, I found that there is indeed one, and it isn't too far from my apartment.  It's in a mall near Chaoyang Park.  So today, we (roomie and I) headed up that way.  After taking the new and chiny line 10 from Shuangjing to Liangmaqiao where we got on a bus.  First thing I noticed about Solana was that it was big (didn't know how big though) and that they had a ColdStone creamery next to a Starbucks.  ColdStone- know I went there.  Went inside, found LL Bean on the map... and when we got outside we saw just how huge Solana is. 

We got to the section that houses LL Bean (I took a pic from outside) and went to the 2nd floor.  They have an ice- skating rink, and there were people skating... in July.  Then we got sidetracked by odd-looking "relaxation & exercise" equipment.  Finally, we explored.  No LL Bean.  Asked many people (or at least she did since she speaks Chinese).  Wandered and wandered...

Finally we came to the conclusion at Starbucks (with me thoroughly enjoying my Breathless Boston Creme Pie ice cream mix from ColdStone) that LL Bean hasn't opened yet.  Especially since there were a bunch of stores that were still not open and lookin' awfully empty.  And it wasn't on the map. 

Found out that there's a new mall going up near the apartment too.  So far it'll have a KFC, C&A (don't know), Haagen-Daz (can't spell) and a bakery called Tous Les Jous (I used to know what that meant).  And we'll have a Melody KTV on the corner... yay.

Tomorrow I'm off to find a new MP3 player... mine's dead, Jim.

The day we left China the subway stations machines finally started to work.

While we were waiting for the train the train officials rounded some people up and made them weigh their luggage. Oddly only Chinese people were ordered to weigh in.

When we got on the train the beds had no sheets. They came by later and gave us sheets and took our tickets. We had a standard class berth with 4 beds. But since there wasn't a 4th person in out berth, we put all our stuff on the extra bed.

In our exploration of the train we saw that the first class berthes had 2 beds and a bathroom . There is no shower though. The bathroom is share between 2 compartments. I'm not sure if they get refilled with TP.

There was also an electrical outlet in the aisle of the train for the standard class. First class has an outlet in the compartment. I put my mp3 player to charge in the walkway area and sat near the door of the compartment to keep an eye on it. (The outlet is the standard Asian/European type.)

I must strongly advise that anyone thinking of going to Beijing, should stay well clear of Join Inn and its ignorant owner John. I booked a room here through hostelworld (who have been very good in the issue) 3 months ago and at the last minute had my reservation cancelled. Conveniently they decided to refurbish at the last minute, even though they had already received my deposit. After emailing the owner John several times whilst in Beijing, asking how we could get our money back, he chose to ignore me. When he finally promised to reimburse the money, we had already left the city (this was 10 days later). Emails were exchanged with Join Inn and Hostelworld and whenever the email was three way, there were promises of payment, then private emails would be sent to me refusing. After 3 months John told me that i must first pay a $10 bank fee if i want to receive my money back, even though it was his fault that he made the cancellation! He has been rude, obstructive and thoroughly unhelpful throughout. Hostelworld have kindly offered to refund the money, even though they are not obliged to. They call it a good will gesture, something that this horrible man John would never have heard of. Please stay clear of Join Inn when visiting Beijing, there are a host of other wonderful hostels including Qian Men and Leo Hostel, both of which were excellent.

So, what an amazing day!!

We woke up at 6am as we were being picked up at 7.20. The pandas tend to sleep during the hot part of the day and are more active during the cooler morning hours so all the tours get you there early. We were joined by two couples and drove the 10km to the base. Tip to anyone traveling in a mini people carrier in Chengdu, do not sit on the very back seats! The roads are filled with potholes and everyone drives at speed, we felt like we were in a rollercoaster ride and actually left the seat several times!

Once there our guide led us up a winding path, framed with tall bamboo that had bent towards each other to form a natural arch. Our first stop was an adult enclosure, which housed a single panda, fast asleep on a wooden frame. We cooed over him for a while, then spotted movement in the tree behind him. In the enclosure behind a panda was climbing a tree. We were led round by our guide and to our delight found five sub-adult pandas very much awake and full of energy. Most were play fighting, we watched in delight as two squabbled over who got to sit on a swing, both trying to pull the other off and jump on in their place. It got the the point where both were sitting on the swing and a third was trying to pull them off! The enclosures are very well designed, lots of trees and vegetation for them to play in and explore. The others were getting on with the important task of eating. Bamboo is a very poor diet, only 20% is digested which means they have to eat for 16-18 hours a day to gain enough nurishment. The bamboo fed to the pandas here is specially grown to improve the nutrients the pandas get.

Our next stop was the babies enclosure. These babies were about 10 months old and even more playful. There were six youngsters in the enclosure and all were playing, with a keeper in with them to make sure they didnt get into any scrapes. The enclosure had several climbing frames for them to clamber over, along with a shallow pool (pandas quite like water apparently). All the cubs were scrambling over the frames, some more graceful than others, one actually got himself stuck in the fork of two logs and it took some wiggling to free himself! The pandas are very well looked after here. The main centre is the one we visited which is called Chengdu research and breeding centre. Its aim is to improve the number of pandas in the wild, while maintaining the gene pool by captive breeding. The base has been open for over 20 years, with two other sites in nearby. Unfortunately the Wolong base was virtually destroyed by the recent Sichuan earthquake. One panda and several staff were killed, some pandas escaped but shortly returned and all have since been rehomed and are receiving 'cuddle therapy' for the trauma.

Because it is Rachel's birthday soon (and she went completely gaga over them) I paid for her to hold one of the babies. She had to wear an apron and gloves so she didnt pass on any germs (the keepers have to wear them any time they deal with the pandas) and sat on a bench so the panda could be moved from the person before. The panda was perfectly content to sit there he was being handed pieces of apple to munch on and looked very relaxed. Rachel on the other hand was beaming from ear to ear. I took as many photos as I could (and a short video) before the our time was up. The pandas are rotated so that they dont spend too long being photographed but are very used to it as they have human interaction since birth.

The whole experience was amazing, one never to be forgotten. To see such an endangered animal so close was truly breathtaking and anyone thinking of visiting China should make a point to come to Chengdu.

So, yet another sleeper train.

Our train left at 1.20pm and was scheduled to take 16 and a half hours, making us arrive at 6am. This wasnt the greatest news but we contacted the hostel we were going to stay with and arranged for them to collect us. Just in case something went wrong (again) we picked up a leaflet from the hostel in Xi'an which had the address in English and Mandarin. We had booked soft sleeper bed again, which were actually more like hard sleepers. The train was shabbier than the previous ones, most likely because they were traveling between poorer cities. In the dining cart we encountered a few diffculties. The main one being that NO ONE spoke any English. We sat at a table for a long time, with the waitress that was taking orders staying down the other end of the carriage. Eventually the woman that was serving found us a menu with English writing on it but we quickly discovered it wasnt their menu, just an odd one laying about as everything we tried to order they didnt do. We ended up having to order two portions of egg fried rice as it was the only thing we pointed to that they had. We also tried to order two bottles of beer, but the waitress again shook her head. We found this a bit annoying as they clearly did have beer as we saw them serving it to other people. The Chinese people in the carriage found our situation highly amusing, many were openly staring at us and laughing. Im sure we were the butt of quite a few jokes.

After our delicious(!) meal we headed back to our cabin, stopping to buy a few bits from one of the staff that were walking up and down the train with trolleys of food and drink. We managed to buy two bottles of beer from her, ony I think because we reached into the bottom of the trolley and picked them up. I can only assume that women drinking beer is highly unusual because as we sat in our cabin, merrily drinking our beer, we got many people gawking us as they walked past, with one man actually doing a double take and poking his head into the cabin to get a closer look!

We busied ourselves by admiring the scenery. The train route was through mountains, actually going through the middle of them! It was very remote, but here and there we still saw evidence of people. Crops of sweetcorn were planted on the side of steep slopes and tiny huts were plonked between trees. As we were standing outside our cabin a family from a cabin a few doors down had gathered near us and were all looking at us, talking to each other about us. We found this a bit rude, 'look at the strange people, arnt they funny looking' and tried to ignore them. They eventually pushed forward a twelve year old boy, who turned out to be one of the only English speakers in the group. It turns out they were quite facinated by us, particularlly at my amazing height. In China the women are very small, the average being 5' 4, and the men arnt that much taller at 5'7 so me being almost 6' was facinating to them. They were also taken with my many tattoos, women in China dont have tattoos (I have previously had old women scrunch their faces up in disgust and mime at me to wash it off!!!). As we were talking to them the women with the trolley came round again and we treid to buy another beer. She told us 'no beer' but we persisted, with the man from the family (who spoke no English at all) saying he wanted to buy us a beer so we could drink with him.

We were invited into their cabin to sit down and spent a good few hours talking to them. They taught us the Mandarian for hello (Ni Hao) and for cheers (Gam Pai). We were questioned on lots of different things, from what we ate (bread and milk make us strong!) to brothers and sisters. There is a one child law in China, the population is so big that extreme measures have been brought in to halt the massive surge in numbers. The family asked us to write down our names on a piece of paper and as I started writing mine they all exclaimed in surprise. I take it left handers arnt that common in China either huh! We eventually headed to bed aroun 11pm, as we had to be up at 5am to ensure we were ready for when the train got in at 6. Turns out we neednt have bothered as our train didnt actually arrive until 10.30am! Four and a half hours late! Our 16 and a half hour journey turned into a twenty one hour journey!

Not surprisingly there was no one waiting for us when we exited so we jumped into a taxi and showed him the address. The taxi pulled up at the end of a road that was blocked off and pointed down it then at the address. We thanked him (xie xie which is pronounced shi shi) and headed down. The street is actually a very old alley, with some buildings, our hostel included, dating from the Qing dynasty. We checked in with no problem, but the floor of our dorm room had a huge puddle in it which we had to report. They apologised and mopped it up for us, we sat outside and went online for while. Once we figured the floor was dry we went back in to sort our stuff out. I was sitting on my bed (the lower bunk) when I happened to look up at the wall opposite and saw a huge spider. All I could managed was a 'Woooohhhhhhoo(very articualate I know) but it made Rachel look up. She took one look and shot out the door, telling me to 'get the boy, g.g.get the boy'. I took this to mean get the guy on reception to catch it so I went out to reception. There was actually a woman on reception who didnt know the word spider, but she soon got the gist when I made a creepy crawly running gesture with my hand. She followed me back to the room, took one look and went and got the boy lol! He took one look and fetched a broom. He eventually managed to kill it by squashing it onto the mattress and promised to change the sheets. We were a bit dubious about sleeping in the room after that but it turns out we didnt have to as about an hour later one of the staff came up to us and said they were going to have to change our room as the puddle from earlier was actually being caused by the AC dripping.

We were put into an 8 bed dorm, with 4 guys and 1 girl. This would have been ok, except the frosted glass door of the bathroom was still partially see through, and the door didnt lock! We put up with it for one night and the next morning asked to change rooms, opting for a private room, which we got at a discount for all the trouble we'd had. We then went out to explore the area, heading to people's park. Inside the park we heard music, eidel wiess from the sound of music of all things! We of course had to find out what was going on so heading towards it and found a group of middle aged women dancing. We stood and watched for a while, finding it all very amusing. Turns out it wasnt an isolated group, as we walked round the park we came across group after group of women dancing, they were EVERYWHERE!! It wasnt even as if it was the weekend, this was midday on a Tuesday! To be fair they did look like they were having a great time.

After the park we went to find the huge white marble statue of Chairman Mao. In Wild Swans (the book Rachel is reading about China's history) there is a part set in Chengdu, and it says the marble used to create the statue had to be dug out of the quarry by hand, as using machinery would 'diminish the effort and dedication to Mao'! Tomorrow we go to see the pandas, the reason we came!!

can't believe it is easy for me to moved by historied thing,maybe everyone has the same feeling too

Hey Guys,

Sorry its been awhile since I last wrote. Been doing really great lately on this side of the pond. Still not tired of the food and my volunteer work continues to be great. I learn more and more chinese every day and its amazing how willing these people are to teach you chinese. I have about another week here in Xian to go and then Im off to Beijing and Shanghai for a few days each. Sadly ill be leaving right before the olympics start so I wont be around for any of the action. I gotta run here, I know this is a short blog but I just wanted people to know that Im still alive. Ill write more before I leave.

Thad

Beijing is an amazing city. I'm told it's a bit cleaner and prettier for the Oympics, but this city is huge, spotless, full of flowers and trees, and completely modern (except for the narrow hutong neighborhoods). Yes, the smog is awful. Worse than Pomona, CA in the late 80's. My photos of all the sites will be gray, and I've arrived at the best time possible...they've already started limiting the cars on the road (alternating by license plate #), and 70 or 80% of factories stopped production.

Olympics fever is everywhere...the 5 cutesy Olympic mascot characters are everywhere, and billboards with Beijing Welcomes You, or We Are Ready! are all over. Signs in English are everywhere, and instructions and maps are everywhere. I'm assuming many athletes are here already to acclimate, but I haven't seen any track suits at all. In fact, seen very few non-Chinese tourists here. Even at the main tourist sites. People openly stare at me, but they also ask if I need help when I look lost.Very few speak English, but if they do they want to practice.

My first few days I checked into a charming courtyard hotel in a hutong...walking by the scallion pancake cooking guys in the morning, trying to get thru the ctush of bikes, street sweepers and old folks sitting on buckets and boxes playing Chinese chess. The hotel was all carved wood, red lanterns, embroidered silk bedspreads and flowers, and thoroughly modern...flat screen TV, fancy new bathroom with water pressure...and wi-fi!!

My big adventure here has been touring the pharmacies of Beijing. I got a bladder infection (yay, fun) the last day in Mongolia. I had an antibiotic with me, but wanted to know if it was the right one to take, how much, etc. It was a comedy trying to explain my predicament...my dictionary didn't have 'bladder' in it, so I was trying to pronounce 'urine infection' and they showed me some diarrhea medicine (it had English on the back), so I pointed to my butt and said "Not here...HERE," (pointing to my front). I'm sure the entire pharmaceutical community here thinks I'm syphilitic or something.

I finally found a Chinese hospital--the dr. gave me a prescription for an antibiotic without any tests. I later looked it up in the Internet and it said it's not efective for this. So the next day I called my travel insurance and got a recommended international clinic (western medicine) who told me to take the one I had. The symptoms came back, so I went back today for yet another antibiotic prescription...criminy.

My tour started a few days ago...I'm the only one in the group! Private tour...apparently very few visas were issued to make sure the athletes got theirs. My private tour leader is Jackie, 26 years old from Yangshuo. We went to Tianan'men Square (big), Forbidden City (amazing), Summer Palace (beautiful), Bei Hai Park (lovely), The Temple ofHeaven (ok, the temples are starting to look alike) and climbed the Great Wall at Mutianu (surprisingly uncrowded). I love this city...the architecture is fantastic, but holy crap it's hot, humid and smoggy.

Jackie is a former chef from the cooking school I'll be going to in Yangshuo, so she's taking me to the real Chinese places and I let her order. Kast night we went to fmous Beijing restaurant...they had wacky entertainment, like a dough twisting guy and a caramilzed sugar sculpting guy, plus a local tv celebrity singing traditional songs. Everyone clapped and yelled things back (the Chinese version of dueling pianos?). Food was great.

I also grabbed dinner one night at Wangfujing Street...with allthose street vendors sellingfried scorpions on a stick. I got some grilled octopus on a stick...the Chinese were lined up for that, and it was good...looks funny with the tentacles sticking out though. Mo one really eats the scorpions and seahorses unless it's a dare. But it's fun to watch folks do it. Got some caramalized grapes in stick too. Everything's on a stick!

Leaving for Xi'anon the night train in a half hour. Hopefully post photos there.

I stayed at Sally's Cafe and Hostel after finding its listing inside "Let's Go China" guidebook. Unfortunately, my guidebooks (both Lonely Planet and Let's Go) did not have a map of Kangding so I asked someone to point out how to get to Nanwu Temple which the hostel is located next to. The walk took about 15 minutes. The hostel is located up a little hill and the owner placed signs around the street to indicate its location. The hostel features shared rooms with Tibetan styled beds (see picture) and blankets. The beds maybe hard by western standards but I thought it was okay. Although I was there in July, nights in Kangding are chilly because of the elevation so the hostel does provide extra blankets upon request. The hostel has a cafe but I didn't eat there so I can't comment on the food. The owner can also organize daytrips to nearby areas such as the Tagong grasslands and other villages. There's also internet access for a small fee. Unfortunately this maybe a turn off to some would be visitors but I feel I should mention this. The bathrooms are all shared and when I was there the shared bathroom on my floor was not clean. There is no hot water and the toilets are Asian-style or squat toilets. Nevertheless, I'm glad I stayed at Sally's as I got to meet other travelers (all Americans) and the owner was very helpful. During my first day there I wasn't feeling well and even had a fever. When I mentioned this to the owner he took me to find a pharmacy and helped me with picking the right medicine. The hostel charged 20 yuan per bed per night. [On a side note, I didn't get too many photos of the hostel or the immediate area because the local People's Liberation Army barracks and station is located right next door. And during my stay the soldiers were doing training exercises outdoors and the last thing I wanted to do was arouse their suspicions with my camera.]

During my Beijing trip,  a couple of my co-workers and myself, hired a tour guide to take us to the Great Wall. I can't remember how much it cost, due to the massive hangover from the night before, compliments of a damn tea house that we stumbled upon after eating dinner, that was a block away from the hotel. We drank shots of some sort of moonshine called "Xian Quan Jiu" OMG this stuff put me on my ass...

Anyway, back to the Great Wall. We hired "Mr Li" (real name, Li Hui Sheng) This gentleman spoke perfect English and picked us up at the hotel. He was very patient waiting for three hung-over/drunk Americans to finally come down from their rooms to partake in this excursion. Here is the jest...

Once we arrived to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, we got out of Mr Li's little van and immediately froze my ass off. I was told that it was a brisk 17 degrees Fahrenheit. We took a ski lift to the top of the mountain where it was cooler yet. My feet were so cold they hurt, and I couldn't stop shaking. But I tell you what.... That all went away once we climbed the first set of stairs. OMG I was completely sober and dehydrated within ten minutes. But that wasn't stopping me. We reached the second set of stairs and to our delight we saw a street vendor that had chocolate bars, Pringles, soda, and WATER! We bought him out of ALL his water. We paid him in Dollars, and after we cleaned him out, he packed up his cart and went home. I think he made more money from us in ten minutes than he made all of last year. He kept hugging us and was crying and we couldn’t understand a damn thing he was saying, but his face showed an emotion of being thankful.

 All in all, the pictures will reflect what my eyes saw. The views are magnificent. This is something you have to experience in your lifetime. By the way, the best part of this whole tour was getting off the mountain. You actually ride a toboggan down the mountain! What a rush. I hope you enjoy my pics, and thanks for taking the time to read this blog.

PS. Mr Li is a magnificent tour guide. He will take you anywhere. His info is below.

Mr. Li (Li Hui Sheng)
Cell# 13801393957
lihueisheng@hotmail.com

We stayed two nights in this hotel. The rooms are good and clean. Breakfast is average. Half continental; half chinese. Enough, but not very special. It's a large hotel with internet-connection and bar and lot's of fresh flowers in the lobby. The hotel has its own shuttlebus to bring you to the town. But you can also take a walk; taxi or ride on horseback.

We stopped at the border between China and Mongolia for passport control. As soon as we pulled into the station the officials came by every compartment to check under the beds and take our passports. Everything was very serious and they all seems like they hated their jobs, their lives, and everyone on the train. I could almost imagine all of them going home to beat their wives or husbands and kick their dogs.

We were in Erlian for about 8 hours. For the first 2 hours we just sat on the train as the train kept moving back and forth. (Later we found out that they were adding and removing cars to the train. Every country has it's own dining car.) Then we were told that we could get off the train and wonder around town but we couldn't get back on the train until it was time to go. I wanted to get off the train, but mom wanted to take all her important stuff with her. So while she unpacked and repacked her stuff the train conducters open and then closed the doors. So we were stuck on the train.

The train pulled into the "garage" and the next  4 hours were spent lifting the train up and pulling the wheels out. They slid smaller (or maybe bigger... I don't remember now.) wheels under the train. During these 4 hours there was no electricity so no fan. (The transmogolian trains has no a/c. All you get is a tiny blue wall fan.)

The last 2 hours where spent back at the station where everyone who left got back on board and we waited for them the give us back our passports.

When we pass the actual China/ Mongolian border there was a little Chinese soldier standing guard with his guns making sure the Mongolians don't sneak into China. There were no Mongolian soldiers on the other side. I don't think the Mongolians spend too much time worrying about the Chinese.

We went to the Heavenly Temple Park, but we didn't see the Heavenly Temple. We were tired of temples and were more interested in the people at the park. This park is where the happy old people go to hang out, play games, dance, show off what they can do, or learn to do something new. It was wonderful watching strangers teaching each other how to dance, do tai chi, or fight.

After the park we took a public bus to the Summer Palace. It was a really hot day and going to where the kings of ancient China went to cool off seemed like a great idea. It was a little cooler there and very very beautiful... so beautiful that it didn't look real. It was a great place to spend our last day in China. 

Reading through my Lonely Planet book, that great source of half information, I saw an entry about an undergound city. Mao had it built because of his fear of the Russians and their nuclear weapons. It was a secret when it was built and it appeartly is still a secret because no one could give us directions to the place.

The place where it actually was and the place where to Lonely Planet book says it is are two different places. But the address the book gives is correct. So, we looked for the address and found it quickly. Of course, first we follwed some old lady on a bike who claimed to know where is was. She actually wanted us to buy stuff from her and took us on a wild goose chase.

After that we went to Lama Temple. I have said before that to me ALL temples look the same. Lama temple is no exception. Same Same

We had Peking Duck and some semi-fancy restaurant. For some reason when we order rice they always write it on the bill, but then forget to bring it to us. Then when we ask for the rice we order they look shocked. "You mean you actually want to EAT rice, not just order it?"

Later we saw an acrobatic show.

Because of the up coming Olympics Beijing is changing. New buildings are being built and old building are getting a face lift. Where ever a neighborhood of builds can't be fixed they put up new walls to hide them. Some places even have entirely new neighborhoods. Now you can find new public toilets everywhere you go, and they're free.

They have installed new subway ticket dispensing machines and readers, but none of them work as yet. For now the commuters still get their tickets read by subway workers. There are a lot of brand new subways trains that do work though. And some subway station have new A/C systems in place.

The police are also patroling every where I see. There are crossing guard at almost every crosswalk to discourage everyone from j-walking. Police are doing ramdom searches of the bags of people going and coming out of the subway at Tianimen Square. But they only do their searches on Chinese people. There are also many cops and soldiers just walking around and makes sure everything is under control.