Awesome Itinerary

Tomorrow is the big day! We are leaving Japan and returning to the United States. I still can't believe it.

We're really sad about leaving Japan, but we have a lot to look forward to as well. For example, it's so much easier to visit friends and family by taking a drive or hopping on a train than it is to fly across continents and oceans. And, it is much easier to call people who live in nearby timezones. So, that's exciting. :)

Chris's ticket was purchased by the Japanese government. They attempted to get him as short and direct a flight as possible. So, his itinerary is simply: KIX - DET - PIT. He will leave Osaka on Wednesday and arrive in Pittsburgh later that same day.

I've already unveiled my exciting return itinerary to several of you, but I'm still so tickled by its sheer awesomeness, that I must share it further. Since my ticket purchase was coming straight from our wallets, I aimed to get the cheapest and most fun alternative available, and I think I succeeded. I will be taking the following route: KIX - PEK - LAX - Costa Mesa - San Diego - SAN - SFO - PIT.

I will get to spend five hours in the Beijing Airport, which is exciting because it will be only two days before the Olympics begins. I hope I get to see some athletes while I am there. But, the absolute best part is that I will get the chance to see and stay with friends of mine in Costa Mesa and San Diego while still paying less for the trip. I'm lucky to know such cool folks in such convenient locations. :) Can't wait to get my travel on!

(Update: I did see some Olympic athletes in Beijing. Sweet! Also, I missed my connecting flight in SFO and had the opportunity to wait nine additional hours before catching a red-eye flight to Pittsburgh. This little switch resulted in my leaving Osaka on Wednesday morning, but not arriving into Pittsburgh until Saturday morning. How awesome is that?!)

China Photo Pages

Without further ado, here is the first of the photo pages from my trip to China. I'm sorry it took almost two months to get this posted. Life has a wonderful way of making you live... so there's not much time to document said living. I've been very busy "extracting maximum value" out of Japan and loving every second of it. Maybe, I'll find time to go into detail about that someday. :)

Shanghai

Three Gorges Dam

In Yichang, we boarded the Victoria Star ship and headed west on the Yangtze River. Our path took us past the Gezhouba Dam and the Three Gorges Dam, Wushan, the Daning River tributary, Wanzhou and Feng Du before arriving in Chongqing. We only traveled 660 km (410 miles) along the river but somehow that took four days!

Our first shore excursion was to see the Three Gorges Dam in Sandouping, China which is in the middle of the Xiling Gorge, the first and longest of the three gorges on the Yangtze. Despite the fact that they say the dogs here bark at the sun, our weather was nice and allowed for a nice view with minimal mist/fog.

We took a look at the dam from both sides and got to enjoy a small museum with a 1:850 scale model of the whole project. There were also a few lookout areas and several nice landscape features - rocks, sculptures, fountains, flowers. I guess the tourism of the dam is as important as the whole electricity, flood control, irrigation package.

Here also, was a hilarious sign suggesting that we should not climb over the fence. Oh English as a second language, how I love thee!

Throughout this excursion, we were bombarded with reasons why the Three Gorges Dam was awesome and why Sandouping was such a perfect location for the dam. Here's a brief rundown of the facts...

The dam is huge! The signs said it was 2335 meters long, 185 meters high, 18 meters wide at the top and 130 meters wide at the bottom. That's damn big. Ha!

In Sandouping, the river is wider, so you can install more generators. Also, there was an existing island which helped with river diversion after the dam construction was underway. Lastly, there is a geologic advantage - the rocks are mostly granite near Sandouping compared with limestone elsewhere in the gorges. You can add the granite that you blast from the mountains into the cement needed to make the dam.

The Three Gorges Dam has a very large system of locks. It took ten years to build and has both an upstream and downstream chamber path. Each chamber can hold 4-10 ships and it takes roughly three hours for a ship to pass all the way through the locks. Also, they are nearly done with building an express ship elevator (will only take 4o minutes) which will be able to lift 12000 tons!

The construction plans were set into three phases: 1993-2003, 2004-2008 and completion in 2009. The Chinese government thinks they may be able to finish the dam ahead of schedule and under the originally estimated cost of $28 billion. Wow!

A funny story about the first phase of construction is that in the #1 Powerhouse (14 generators) the turbines and generators were built by foreign contractors from Germany, Switzerland, France and Canada. Then, in the #2 Powerhouse (12 generators) the Chinese were able to copy and backwards engineer their own after closely studying the foreign technology. The local guide, Echo (Wu Shin), refused to say which country's design they copied.

One crazy aspect of the second phase of construction is that the dam will be raising the river to a level of 175 meters above sea level to create a huge reservoir. This has flooded/will flood lots of cities, villages, farms, etc... and 1.5 million people are currently being relocated. I'm sure the local residents will find it weird to be able to sail over their old homes.

The Great Yichang

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

After visiting Shanghai, we flew to Yichang (宜昌), a city at the Eastern end of the Xiling Gorge (西陵峡), one of the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River.Our local guide, Tiger (Li Hu), told us that the city's name means "Easy and Prosperous." Evidently, it was so named because many crops thrive in the area (Spring: Wheat, Corn, Rapeseed (Canola), Summer: Rice, Fall: Tangerines, Winter: Cotton) and the city has long been a distribution center of goods, as well as a thriving port making trade easy.

As far as I could tell, the main focuses of local industry were the Gezhouba Hydra Project (1970-1988) and the Three Gorges Dam (1994-still not quite done). They even have a place called the "330 Area" which commemorates Chairman Mao's 3/30/56 visit to check the site of the first dam on the Yangtze River. Because there are so many dams in the area, it is considered the "Electricity Capital" of China.

Their local tourism slogan cracked me up. It was simply, "The Great Yichang." The idea was that when someone hears the slogan, they will be reminded of the better environment in Yichang - for example, that they have many green trees, cleaner air and thus a longer lifespan than other cities in China. I think they could use a little marketing help.

While not particularly relevant to the history or culture of the area, my favorite part was a local park that we visited. It was very local - not a tourist spot by any stretch of the imagination. It was nice to see what people might do on a lazy Sunday in Yichang. There were old men playing cards and Mah Jong in one area. There was a jumping castle and some arts and crafts tables for little kids in another area. But, best of all, there was a hybrid gym/playground for "kids of all ages."

Here we can see Ana and Damaris, two awesome ladies from our tour group, trying out some of the sweet cardio machines. There were swings, upper back and oblique machines, standard jungle gyms, ellipticals, monkey bars, and so much more. The most fun I had was using a machine that was something like a Gazelle Strider. It definitely felt great after all the time we spent going from bus to airplane to bus again. Seriously, if more gyms were as much fun as this, everyone would exercise all the time!

Patience is a Virtue

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's so much to report on and yet no reporting. I will leave you with a few representative pictures to end this posting drought. Enjoy!

The locks system of the Three Gorges Dam. This is where we were when the earthquake in China's Sichuan province near Chengdu hit. The two locations are quite far apart.

My dad dressed as a traditional fisherman on a sanpan boat. He navigated us through the Small Gorges of the Ma Du River (a tributary of the Daning River which is a tributary of the Yangtze River)
Empress Renee and Emperor Campbell of the Awesome Dynasty

One of many adorable pandas at the Chongqing Zoo.
WOW! The Terracotta Army of the First Qin Emperor in Xi'an. (dating from ~210 BC)
Me and Dama on the back of a resting camel along the Sacred Way at the Ming Tombs in Beijing.
My parents on the Great Wall of China.
Enjoying the "view" from Victoria Peak in Hong Kong. I still say it's just fog. Yep. Fog.
Who loves Phuket, Thailand? This happy girl! Sun + Sand + Surf = Perfect

Wanted: A Shanghai Husband

I'm beginning to think that every country has its own special brand of tourism humor.

Just like every tour operator in Costa Rica tells you that it's the bus driver's first day on the job, every tour guide in China (every one that I met, anyway...) jokes that the best souvenir to bring home with you is a Shanghai husband.

Shanghai husbands are notorious for treating their wives very, very well.

When dating, a future Shanghai husband has to be very attentive. They often go shopping, carry their girlfriends' purse and anything she buys, and plan excellent dates.

Before they are even "eligible" to propose, a Shanghai husband must own a car and an apartment or condominium. This is no small feat since apartments are expensive and you usually need to have 30% down before securing a mortgage in China.

Then, when they do get married, these men usually do all the cooking, dishes and laundry in addition to being the main bread-winner for the family. Wow!

Why is this the case? The main reason is that China's One-Child policy (which began in 1979) caused a gender imbalance - leaving many men to choose from a limited pool of potential wives. This gave power to the girls who can be more choosy and demanding than ever before when selecting a boyfriend or husband. So, now, if men in China want to get married they have to meet ever increasing requirements from their future wives. Poor guys!

(The above photo is of Haibao - the mascot for the 2010 World Expo Shanghai. Of course, he must be a Shanghai husband in training.)

Children's Palace

Not a typical tourist mecca, one of the more surprising stops on our tour of Shanghai was the Children's Palace of Xuhui District.
There are several such schools throughout the city.

This particular Children's Palace and its grounds were the former residence of Rong Desheng, a famous Chinese industrialist. In the 1950's, this residence was converted into an extracurricular activities center where children can go after school or on the weekends to study things like the Beijing Opera, theatre, ballet, dance, singing, chess, calligraphy, painting, sketching, music and martial arts.

The Children's Palaces are not free of charge, but the class fees are fairly cheap and anyone who can pay can attend. You don't need to be elite or a child prodigy. I wish I could enroll in some of these courses - what fun!

We got to look in on a couple of classes and watch the students at work. In several classes, mothers and fathers were there to provide extra instruction and encouragement. Because it was completely new to me, I found the erhu class especially interesting. Erhu is something like a two-stringed violin. It is a very expressive instrument, often used for playing sad songs.

Chinese 101

Once I arrived in Shanghai, I was very interested in learning some Chinese. With all the conflicting vocabulary and grammar from English, Spanish, French and Japanese floating around in my brain why not try to learn a bit of Chinese too?

Our local Shanghai guide, William (Hong Wei), and our national guide, Rocky, were happy to help us learn a few words and phrases each day.

To impress us, or maybe to scare us, we learned about the importance of Chinese being a tonal language right off the bat. The awesome example they used was the five pronunciations and meanings of ma:

ma = flat, no emphasis = sentence ending particle that indicates a question
mā = high, level, long tone = mother
má = high, rising, medium tone = hemp
mă = low, dipping, long tone = horse
mà = loud, falling sharply, short tone = curse, scold

Using only one syllable but four tones, you can ask "Did mother curse the horse?" (Mā mà mă ma?) How cool is that?!

But, of course, with the meanings being so diverse and the pronounciatons being relatively close, it would be very easy for a new Chinese language learner to get themselves into hilarious and unintended linguistic nightmare situations. Sounds like a fun challenge to me. Bring it on!

We've been Shanghaied!

The word "shanghaied” means to be deceived or tricked and it comes from the 19th century practice of shipping companies hiring unsavory folk to get other men drunk in order to abduct them and force them to work on a ship bound for China. Thankfully, I am not an indentured sailor in China. But, my parents and I did start our tour in Shanghai, the most populous city in China.

The above photo shows a view of the Pudong area of Shanghai as seen from the Bund. Pudong means "east of the (Huangpu) river" and Bund means "riverside, embankment and waterfront." There is a scene in Mission Impossible 3 where Tom Cruise jumps along this skyline from building to building. It seemed a little ridiculous in the movie, and now, having seen the actual size and location of the buildings, it seems even more ridiculous. I guess we were shanghaied after all. Thanks a lot Tom!

We crossed under the Huangpu River (via the cheesy but nonetheless amusing Bund Sightseeing Tunnel) to get to the Pudong side of the city. Our main goal was to have a drink in the Grand Hyatt Hotel's Cloud 9 Bar. We had it on good authority that the skyline views from this bar were unrivaled in the city and were definitely worth an overpriced drink or two.

To achieve this mission, we had to get to the Jin Mao Dasha Building. The photo to the left is a shot of the Jin Mao Dasha Building from the bottom looking up. It was built in 1998 and is currently the third tallest building in the world at 421 meters high. To arrive at the entrance of the building, we had to cross an extraordinarily busy street without the aid of a crosswalk. We followed a crowd of locals and other bewildered tourists into the street and somehow managed not to get run down in the process. An additional benefit to this exercise was that we confirmed the healthy functioning of all of our adrenaline receptors.

Cloud 9 did not disappoint. From the vantage point of the 87th floor, the views of the Bund and the Pudong area were stunning. It was easy to pick out the highlights of the Shanghai skyline like the Oriental Pearl Building and the Westin Hotel. Plus, we got to experience the full Friday brightness of the cityscape. In an attempt to conserve electricity, Shanghai made the decision to turn off all "landscape lights" except on Friday and Saturday nights from 6:30 to 9:30pm. How lucky that we could enjoy the skyline in all its neon splendor.

Introducing... The Friendlies!

I'm back from China with lots of new and exciting stories to tell. But, I am not feeling very well thanks to the fun souvenir illness that I brought back with me. So, slow and steady will have to do for now.

I'm starting with an introduction to the "Fuwa" or The Friendlies: the five adorable mascots for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

One of the slogans for this year's Olympics is "Beijing Welcomes You!" When you write this slogan in Chinese, it takes five characters to complete the phrase (北京欢迎你) and it is pronounced as "Běijīng huānyíng nĭ" When naming the five Friendlies, they doubled each syllable to form a name: BeiBei, JingJing, HuanHuan, YingYing and Nini.

BeiBei is the blue mascot. She represents water and the blue Olympic ring. And, even though it isn't that clear, she is a fish. Specifically, she is a Yangtze river sturgeon and she is in charge of the
aquatic sports events.

JingJing is the black mascot. He's a giant panda. He represents wood and the black Olympic ring. He is the mascot for sports like judo and weightlifting.

HuanHuan is the red mascot. He represents the Olympic torch, fire, and the red Olympic ring. HuanHuan is the mascot for "ball sports."

YingYing is the yellow mascot. He is a Tibetan Antelope and incorporates some elements of the costumes of two of China's ethnic minority groups. He represents earth and the yellow Olympic ring. He is the mascot for Track and Field.

NiNi is the green mascot. She is a swallow that represents the sky and the green Olympic ring. She is the mascot for sports like gymnastics.

As the Opening Ceremony to the Olympics approaches (08/08/08), I expect you will see these Friendlies in more and more places. Learn their names now to impress your friends and co-workers later.