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| You know what's interesting...is what people constitute as the
'best'. A while back my friend was telling me that Peking
University was supposedly the 'best' university in China
(unfortunately, that probably isn't true, since right next to it is
Tsinghua University which is said to be 'better' than Peking). So
I went on thinking - it's really an interesting topic. I live in
Beijing right now, and yes, everyone says Peking/Tsinghua is the best
around (ofcourse, they don't say its the best in the world, but at
least they believe its best on the Eastside of the world). But
then you take a three hour plane trip to Tokyo and whatdoya know,
people in Japan think Todai (Tokyo University) is the best there
is. Same thing for Korea, Koreans think Yonsei is like the best,
the French the Sorbonne, the English Cambridge/Oxford/LSE, Hong Kongers
HKU, and so on...the amazing thing is that within a short period of
time, you can come accross a whole range of different, contradicting
ideas. In China I thought Beida was the best, but in Japan Beida
isn't the best, Todai is. But then I go to the states and people
never heard of Todai.
Travelling around makes human interaction sometimes harder - exactly
because assumptions that you've made over the years about the people
around you no longer apply. For example, if I had grown up in
Japan all my life, ofcourse people around me all believe that Todai is
the best school there is. So I can assume that any other Japanese
people I meet in Japan will most likely think that way too. But
when you start running into people from China, U.S., Britain, India,
Thailand, Russia, parts of former Russia, then you can't assume
anything about what they think/are thinking. So you just don't
know.
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| So THE Great Wall - yah, it was great alright. I don't think I've
ever walk on a wall for such a long time in my life.
So we actually went to Chengde first, a city to the Northeast of
Beijing. Took like five hours to get there by bus. Pretty
small city, about 200,000 ppl. After checking in at our hotel and
eating a pretty gross dinner we went out to explore the city - heard
that there was a night market out there somewhere...
while wondering around the city center, we ran into a master
calligraphyist who was writing Chinese characters on the city
pavements. Cool stuff. A couple of our very white ppl
wanted to try and we gathered a pretty good crowd in the process.
So they took us hiking the next day and we ended up going to this random rock formation.
Laurina and I at the top. She's holding down the Frog Mountain.
We also went to see some Lamma temples in the afternoon. These
are temples created for Tibbetian buddhists. The above building's
architecture style is very similar to the ones you can see in Tibet -
the outside facade actually hides a huge temple inside, a regular
buddhist temple. I'm guessing that these buildings are designed
this way so that the temple inside can be protected from harsh winter
conditions.
Inside of the complex - you can notice the temple to the right of this picture.
After dinner we headed off to see a cultural performance - Thanks a
bunch for Kwang for setting this up, we needed at least ten people to
get the discount and he was afraid we wouldn't have enough ppl
going. So this scene is the beginning scene where a buncha
Tibettan buddhist came out and showed us their crazy horns.
Some cool looking costumes.
Nice dancing - those ribbon things are awesome.
The emperor's flag ppl.
One of the coolest parts of the show - there was a group of Mongolian
dancers/drummers. In the above pic you can see that each dancer
has a drum attached to their backs and they have to L - shaped sticks
with which they hit the drums like this:
Yah, pretty awesome cool narly stuff.
What about now...
Next day we were taken to see the Emperor's summer retreat palace.
Big group by the lake.
Next day we went over to the Great Wall. Here's a band of
brothers/sisters wondering into ppl backyards trying to find the lost
trail to the Emperor's treasures...we ended up finding someone's
vegetable garden and lotsa shady bugs.
At the start of our hike on the Great Wall.
Yah, the thing just keeps going and going...just like the Energizer rabbit.
Wow, sweaty ppl.
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| So in between Inner Mongolia and going to the Great Wall, Mike, Vivan,
and I ended up going to Taishan to climb one of the Holy mountains of
China. Supposedly lotsa important ppl, like emperors,
Confuscious, and Mao all climbed Taishan. They also said
something profound at the top - for instance Mao said "The East is Red"
or something like that. Well duh, the East is red, its freakin'
communist, or used to be at least. Its quite capitalist now as
you can guess...
so more pics:
a pic of us right before we started off on the central path to the top
of the mountain. It took us about four hours to get to the
top. Wouldn't have made it if it weren't for those fruit stands
selling peaches, yum yum.
where we bought tickets to enter the mountain...
at the half way point. Lotsa Chinese ppl.
So there are buncha of these crazy ppl who carry like major weight up
the mountain. I thought our climb was hard enough, with a bag
behind our backs, these fellows carry hundreds of pounds on their
shoulders every day. The dude here's carrying two huge
watermellons on his left side, among other things.
Making it to the top.
hate to have a girlfriend like that...
Supposedly where Confuscious visited.
The round thang.
The sunrise from top of Taishan. I'm glad we went there, even if
we only saw like a split second of the sun, it was better than not
seeing the sun at all. Its really foggy during the summer for
some reason. Beijing should stop emitting smog.
So a 4 o'clock morning call - more like 3:30am since Chinese ppl are
crazy and they don't sleep. Don't I look just dandy? Yah,
rented out a Mao jacket for 5 kuai, gets pretty chilly up there in the
morning. Some ppl just get to the top at Midnight and kurl up in
them Mao jackets for five hours and walk down after the sun
rises. I love cheap Chinese ppl...
Okay, I've reached my 10meg limit for this month. Tata.
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| Yey, so more picture narrating...
So from like Friday the 14th of July to the 16th of the same month EAP
took us to the good ol' green fields of Mongolia where we trodded
endlessly on them horse crap that they have laying around the whole
place...
so here goes:
daz me and Mike stuck towards the top of the hard sleeper train we was on
- we're both sitting on overhead luggage racks and my feets resting on
my bed. I had the top bunk and i totally did not sleep a bit that
night. OMG, like I just could not get used to the hard pillow
they had for us. Maybe I should stop wining, at least we had a
pillow...
Check out those dunes.
My camel - he has a cork stuck in his nose.
a camel caravan off to their one hour trip - cost like six bucks, not bad.
EAP took over a dune buggy - was lotsa fun.
 EAP shot. how cute.
Just a random pic of the desert - look how big the thing is!
Me turning the good luck charmy things at a Tibetian Buddhist temple.
Turning them golden things once supposedly means reading the Buddhist
scroll once or something. Basically kinda like saying Hail Marys
like over and over again to repent your sins. Now if life was
that easy...
Buncha Buddhist monks. They weren't that nice, guess if you see
random tourists everyday, you would become a little annoyed at them
asking the same darn questions over and over and over
again. Oh, and some were wearing jeans underneath their
robes, and they definitely had cell phones on them.
Our EAPers getting greeted by Native Mongolians at the
grasslands. We were given a shot of their baijiu - flick some
towards heaven, flick once towards earth, smear some on your forehead
and drink that baijiu! Umm, quite fruity with a bad aftertaste
and the locals say that if you get drunk off of that baijiu, you gonna
be hung over for three whole days. NICE.
Thats the Mongolians escorting our bus.
Me wrestling a Mongolian guy - His name is Grrrrrrrrrrle, I think (make
sure you pronounce each 'r'). He ended up writing my name as "黑如"
or "heiru" in pinyin cause that's the closest he got to writing
"Hiro." Fun guy, he freakin' came over at 2am in the morning the
day after we wrestled cause he wanted to see me and be friends with
me. Yah, he came into our yurt, woke me up, and made me take a
couple of shots of Russian Vodka with him. What a inconsiderate MotherF###er. Great guy.
Our feast of two fully roasted lambs - man, those lambs were chewy as
hell. And if you didn't get one of them chewy pieaces, oh boy,
you're in for a bite of a phatt piece of fat. Yes, it was either
chewy or fat. I donno why, lambs aren't usually like chewing on a
gum or are that fatty.
having fun during the feast - just one of them really great nights, ya know. (pic compliments of Kim)
Buncha drunken EAP ppl in front of one of our yurts.
The next day we went out to ride Mongolian horses across the Mongolian
grasslands. Cost 50 kuai per hour - dats about six bucks an hour
for a nice horse and a guide. My horse was pretty fast, nice
horsey.
That's me and Gele. He's a 23old Mongolian (kinda) and he's been
riding on a horse since he was 4 years old. He tells me he likes
to ride wild horses without saddles while naked. shocking...and
well, he's a true Mongolian now cause he's been living in yurts since 9
years old.
Just something interesting I took on the way back from Inner
Mongolia. Since Inner Mongolian is an autonomous region inside
China, it has its own indigineous language. Well, its not
necessary because it is an autonomous region that it has a different
language, but you know what I mean. Nywayz, those little scribble
like things on top of the Chinese characters is the Mongolian
letters. Interesting stuff.
OKAY, so my xanga posting for Inner Mongolia is done.
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