Kung Fu Fighting

Shaolin Temple, on the mountain of Songshan in the Henan province, is famous for its kung fu practicing monks. While today the site is more of a tourist attraction than a temple, it's fun to wander around and watch the kids practicing martial arts. It had a kind of Harry Potter feel.

Here's the illicit video I took at one of the shows. That's me screaming at the end.


I also took the cable car to the top of Songshan, which was serene after the noisy crowds of the temple.

If you're going: You'll probably get stuck on a bus that makes a ton of stops at tourist traps and restaurants on the way to the temple. If you do, you can ditch the tour group as soon as you get to Songshan and catch a 20 kuai cab to the temple. There are busses back to the nearby cities from the temple—you won't get stranded. There is also, apparently, a nonstop bus from the Longmen Grottoes to Shaolin Temple, but I found out about it a day too late. See more pictures here.

Seeing Xi'an

I pushed through the crowds and went to see the Terra-Cotta Warriors on a major travel day—it's not like I was going to ever have a unique encounter with them, like those peasants who were digging a well in the '70s. The peasants, according to a cheesy 360-degree movie at the site, discovered the Qin Dynasty tomb, which was guarded by thousands of terra-cotta statues of soldiers and had been buried for 2,000 years. (By the way, there are three different spots around the attraction where you can get your book signed by the guy who discovered the army. I read somewhere—I think it was Seth Faison's book—that they just bring in random guys from town.)

The excavation is still in progress, so the site has some portions that are still covered, some with pieces scattered on the ground, and some areas where the warriors have been reconstructed. The detail is amazing, and apparently, each warrior is distinct.

If you're going: Take the 306 city bus from the stop across the street from the train station to the Terra Cotta Warriors. I stayed in the Ancient Street Youth Hostel, an old courtyard house that was beautiful and very clean. The staff was friendly and helpful, too.

More pictures, plus pictures of BBQ and boiled cow stomach (L's recommendation) and Xi'an's Great Mosque (the center of the town's sizeable Muslim community) are posted here.

Everybody hates a tourist...

I keep thinking about the movie Into the Wild. The short version: just out of college, Christopher McCandless cuts off ties to his family, gives his savings to charity, and goes on a rambling journey across the U.S., eventually ending up in Alaska, where he plans to live alone off the land.

I found the premise—rich Thoreau-quoting kid takes off in search of an "authentic" experience—whiny and indulgent, but I ended up liking the movie, a true story that John Krakauer researched for a book and Sean Penn turned into the film, a lot more than I expected. The American landscapes where beautiful, but the most amazing part was the people he met along the way—middle-aged hippies, farmers in South Dakota, lonely retirees.

When you travel, you meet people you wouldn't normally encounter. Here are some of the characters from my latest trip:

Younger Train Boy, the one who asked me all about American pop culture, was reading 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. (Self-help books are huge here.) The Chinese edition, apparently, says that every teenager in America reads the book. I told him it wasn't true, and he didn't seem surprised. He had also read Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, but didn't understand much of it. I told him the writer is a little crazy. Younger said that wasn't it—the ideas were just too complex for him to grasp.

The 40-something woman who sat across from me for most of the ride hadn't said much and seemed a little upset that I couldn't always understand her Chinese. At the end of the ride, she said to Younger, who was speaking to me in English and Chinese, that she wished she could speak English. When she was in school, everyone learned Russian.

The man working at my hostel in Xi'an asked if 9/11 really happened, or if it was just a film created by the U.S. government. Two people in a row said that they like the NBA, but prefer Kobe Bryant to Yao Ming.

An Italian guy staying in my hostel was traveling to all of China's sacred mountains and studying Taoism and kung fu. He thought he'd found his kung fu master in Xi'an. "He grabbed my arm, and it felt like his fingers were going inside the muscle—I've never felt anything like it."

On the bus to Shaolin Temple, I met the most adorable Chinese couple. They both looked barely out of high school, but decided to take care of me, making sure I didn't get lost and giving me a map of Luoyang as a parting gift.

McCandless wanted some sort of unique experience—to see something pure and unspoiled. A lot of travelers feel that way. But you can make yourself crazy trying to find the most local, real, obscure—only to find someone has always been there first. And if you push yourself too far into the unknown without any support, it's not that fun or safe—McCandless starved to death in Alaska.

I spent most of my May holiday weekend at some of China's biggest tourist attractions: the Terra Cotta Warriors, Shaolin Temple and Longmen Grottoes. Some places are justifiably famous—all three sites were incredible, and it would've been a shame for me to miss them because I'm too much of a snob to be a tourist. So, I joined the crowds, snapped lots of pictures, ate at overpriced restaurants and bought $2 souvenirs.

Train Talk

When you're on a train with the same people for 25 hours, you're bound to start chatting at some point. So, on the way to Xi'an, when I ordered peanuts and a drink from a passing cart and people realized I could speak a little Chinese, I was swarmed.

Chinese people may, mostly, be patriotic/nationalistic—everyone I've met really loves their country, and many take a softer view toward their government than people in the west—but also, everyone I've encountered has been incredibly excited to meet and talk to an American. (The Times just ran this piece by a writer whose two biracial children (Asian/white) attracted attention when the family traveled around China. I was surprised by how upset it made her—the notice you get as a foreigner has always been good-natured in my experience. And Chinese people love children and taking pictures with strangers, in general.)

Back to the train: We talked for a while about where I was going, what I was doing in Beijing, how I'd learned Chinese, things like that. The group, about five from teens to people in their fifties, really seemed curious to know about it all.

A middle-aged man, the first person who started talking to me, asked what I thought would happen in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. I didn't really understand the question until someone said in English "Clinton's wife."

Yes! I want to talk about things like this, but still hesitate to bring them up.

I said I thought Obama would win, and then asked the group what they thought.

Crickets. Nothing.

Then the guy who asked me about the election said that he, too, thought that Obama might win. I guess they were uncomfortable discussing American politics with me, as I would be discussing Chinese politics with them.

A little later, I was sitting on one of the bottom beds, across from the two younger guys in the compartment. They were passionately discussing something, but I couldn't tell what they were talking about and wasn't really paying attention.

Younger Train Boy (attending college in Beijing) then gestured at me and said "ask her" in Chinese.

"Excuse-a-me," the Older Train Boy (just out of school and working for a European company in Beijing) said in English.

Cool, maybe I will have an interesting conversation with them.

"In America, which is more popular: KFC or McDonalds?"

Right.

Younger later told me that Older doesn't like Japan, but thinks America is OK. Younger admitted he likes Japanese electronics like cell phones. Younger also asked me if Coke or Pepsi was more popular in the States. He said that in China, people prefer Pepsi, but Older took exception to that. Throughout the ride, Younger peppered me with questions about American movies and fast food.

The next morning, a copy of The New Yorker fell from the sky. (Turns out it belonged to someone a few compartments down who had lived in America at one point.) It was a year-old issue, and we all looked at it together.

One of the older guys had been asking me which electronics brands we have in the U.S. (Sony? Yes. Samsung? Yes. Haier? I have no idea.). Looking at a BlackBerry ad, we all figured that there's no BlackBerry in China. I explained to them that an ad with Tina Fey and a bunch of crap in it was for American Express.

Everyone listened intently to my answers and nodded like I'd said something important. It was fun being treated like an expert.

More on Christians in China

According to something I read in The Economist, China will in the next few decades become the country with the largest number of Christians in the world. As the train I took to Xi'an earlier this month was rolling through, maybe somewhere in the Shanxi province, the two guys I was talking to suddenly became incredibly animated and pointed out something we were passing. It was a long, low rectangular building with red crosses on top.

"Do you know what this is called?" the younger guy asked (in English).

"A church." I thought he wanted to know the English name.

"No, no, no. We're not allowed to worship here," he said quickly, putting his hands together as if he was praying. "It is a temple."

K.

It reminds me of something in NPR correspondent Rob Gifford's book China Road, about his experiences driving across China's longest highway, running east from Shanghai to Kazakhstan. I've only read a little of the book, but I went to a reading in Beijing with the author. The portion he read recalls that at some point, he's at—I think it's a horse track—a place where you can usually bet. When he tries to place a bet, the woman at the window informs him that gambling is illegal in China. However, if he'd like, he can make a "guess" about the outcome, and if he guesses correctly, he will win money.

Names are important.

Earthquake

At first, I thought I was feeling light-headed. I was kind of drowsy at work, but why was I suddenly unsteady? And then I realized that it wasn't me--the office was rocking. As everyone in the office started saying "earthquake," and trying to figure out what we should do, we were sent outside to stand around the parking lot. (Are you supposed to go outside during an earthquake? Next to a glass tower and a construction site? Probably not.)

Back at my desk about an hour later, the news finally started trickling out that the rumbling was a major earthquake (7.8 or 7.5, depending on the source) in the Sichuan province. I'm fine, Beijing is fine, but if we could feel the quake here, I'm scared of what the damage must be like out west.

Update: While Beijing is fine, I think the news coming out over the next few days is going to be heartbreaking. Within a few hours of the earthquake, the Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, was already on his way to the affected area.

Meanwhile, rumors of another earthquake swirled around Beijing yesterday evening. While I was doing an interview at an art gallery, the person who arranged the meeting got a call from a journalist who'd just received a top-secret "cable" saying that a bigger earthquake would hit Beijing between 10 p.m. and midnight. When I got home at 8:30, L said that the 7:00 news reported it was just a rumor. Apparently, there was also talk of one hitting at 5:00.

Riding the Rails

I drafted this post on the local (25-hour) train ride from Beijing to Xi'an. Everyone says that Chinese train travel is something you have to experience, and my first trip didn't disappoint.

I had a bed in a hard-sleeper car. There's a hall on one side with an oriental-like runner rug, tiny tables and fold-down chairs next to the window. On the other side, there are open cabins of six beds each, three stacked on each side. The beds aren't so bad, with green bed skirts, pillows, blankets and white sheets. There's a hot water dispenser at one end of the car and a Chinese toilet (hole over the tracks) in the other.

I traveled two days after China's worst train accident in decades, but no one seemed fazed by the disaster—people were more concerned about getting to wherever they were going for the May 1 (something like Labor Day) holiday. Movies played on a small screen. (As I wrote, something starring, I was told, "the Chinese Jim Carrey" was playing.)

Throughout the ride, vendors passed through the aisles selling drinks, instant noodles and snacks from carts; hot meals; toys; and random things like beaded bracelets. Occasionally, there were elaborate sales pitches: At night, a woman came through with money taped to a binder and asked passengers to guess which bills were real or fake. Then, she introduced the tiny light she was selling (4 kuai), which you shine on a bill to see if it's genuine.

The next morning, a guy came through selling packages of socks (3 kuai), and after an animated 5-minute pitch, asked a passenger to hold one end of a sock as he stretched it and scraped it with a wire brush to prove its durability.

I brought a few snacks with my for the ride west, but it was quickly obvious that everyone else toted much more—about two grocery bags each—and much crazier stuff—cans of Spam-like meat, cans of beans, foil packets of preserved veggies, whole cucumbers—than me.

I got to see a lot (a lot, a lot) of the Chinese countryside. There were a lot of little villages that looked like Wuling Shan and beautiful mountains, but also factories everywhere. I was shocked to see microscopic towns with goats grazing covered in a haze of smog. This is a little past Hua Shan, a famous sacred mountain that I decided not to visit when I realized it looked like this.

Riding the train is definitely not for everyone—you've got to climb to reach the higher bunks and the quarters are close—but it was an interesting experience for me, especially meeting several of the people in my car—I'll tell you about them later. (And if you're not sure you'd want to take the hard sleeper, you can imagine what my ride back was like, a 10-hour overnight ride in the hard (90-degree angle) seats, with one person next to me and two across from me, a tiny table separating us. I slept—fitfully—through most of it, so no stories from that ride.)

The People's Republic of Desire

You'll forgive me for calling Annie Wang the Chinese Candice Bushnell. Wang's book is based on columns she wrote for the South China Morning Post about the glamorous lives of cosmopolitan women. Like Sex and the City, the novel depicts a fantasy version of the city (in this case Beijing), but captures a real on a cultural moment and throws in all of the juicy details.

Matching SATC's four women in boom-time 90s New York, PROD features a writer (Niuniu) and her three friends—a fashion editor, a publicist and an entertainment exec—relishing their wealth and freedom as China's capital explodes. Niuniu lives in a renovated hutong home, drives an SUV, goes to posh bars the minute they open, and joins her friends at spas to discuss the latest dramas in lives.

L, who fits the demographic (urban, smart, married to a Westerner) Wang writes about, calls the book "so fake." It's true: the women in the novel are unbelievably fabulous and incredibly self-involved. And it's dying for an editor to trim the fat—the 400-page novel is about twice as long as it should have been, and some passages are painfully clunky.

But some of the social topics Wang touches on—the dilemma of returnees (people who come back after many years in the West and don't feel completely at home in either culture), the way designer goods have become a means for asserting your identity, the skyrocketing divorce rate—well, it certainly reveals a lot about the new Beijing and makes a stark contrast to the grim tales of the Cultural Revolution in older novels.

For more on glossy Beijing, watch the videos at sexybeijing.tv.

Two Months: Welcome to Take!!!!

Just a quick one because I spent most of yesterday and today on a local train to Xi'an, and now I'm in my hostel's very stuffy attic Internet cafe.  I'm also trying out Blogger's email-to-post function so who knows what this will look like.

 

After two months, I definitely feel like things are easier--I don't always feel I have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. Some of the things that really struck me at first don't faze me so much any more--the steps in the subway are really short, even the mattresses are different, people pick their noses whenever they want. Some things I still find charming, like the name of shopping center I pass on my way to my tutoring job (Cat Lifestyle Mall) and the mangled English expressions that have become normal ("Welcome to take Beijing taxi!" "Welcome to take subway line 5!")

 

I've been surprised by how easy it is to find work--at one point last month I was swamped and had to outsource to a friend, and now I feel like I can focus on jobs that are interesting or good for my career. And I've been kind of amazed by how many people have been willing to meet with me or have expressed interest in my pitches.

 

I feel like I turned a corner with my Chinese on WuLing Mountain. I'm more confident in speaking, and I can sometimes understand what people are saying to me. 

 

I've left Beijing three times, and I'm dying to see more of this country. Since I've become busy, I haven't done much sightseeing in Beijing, either, so I need to make time for that.

 

It hasn't been all easy: I'm starting to miss New York. I could really use an NYC-style press event--fancy cocktails, publicists standing around making sure you're having a good time, presents at the end of the night just for being you (yes, magazine editors are spoiled)--every now and then. And I've figured out the two things that are really interfering with my quality of life in Beijing--the traffic and the pollution. So I have to figure out ways to work around them--maybe a bicycle and more time sitting on my balcony with the windows closed. 

 

Tomorrow, I meet the Terra Cotta Army. After that, I have a few days to go wherever, before I have to be back in Beijing. What should I do?