The END

This is my last blog.

On Friday February 1, I’m flying back to Cincinnati, back home. I’ve posted close to 70 articles on this blog over the last 6 months with the purpose of sharing some of my experiences with friends and family. I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing about my adventures.

I’ve got to know some great people, tried a few new things, traveled a bit across China, learned a lot (also about myself) and feel re-energized. My stay in Beijing felt like a sabbatical as I had plenty of time to think, to reflect, to study, to observe and to write.

I want to thank all of you for staying in touch with me, for posting your comments, for visiting me, calling me and sending me plenty of emails. I certainly want to express my gratitude to my supervisors at work for giving me the opportunity to take this assignment. My largest debt of gratitude is to my wife Greet and sons Andreas and Simon. I owe a great deal to my family for enduring my absence. You guys rock!

I once read that:”The true worth of your travels lies not in where you come to be at the journeys end, but in who you come to be along the way.” For sure, the whole experience has influenced me in several ways but only time will tell what will be long-lasting. For now I’ll keep going with the flow and cherish the many happy moments I encountered in Beijing and during my travels in China.

THANKS.
Paul

Farewell to my bike

Today I drove my bike for the last time. I took it to a Starbucks and left it there unlocked. I hope that one needed person in Beijing will pick it up and keep the wheels spinning. Only 5 more days left in Beijing and today seemed like the right day to depart from my iron horse. It has served me well.

Happy Chinese New Year

Feb 7, 2008 is the start of the new year in China and the start of the Year of the Rat. Chinese New Year is without a doubt the biggest holiday in China and a major one in East Asia. Hundreds of millions of people are traveling within China as they are visiting their family. They travel by train, bus, car, plane, boat, etc... you can imagine the chaos when such a large mass of people is on the move. In my travels last week I could already sense a larger crowd in the airports. Not for the faint of heart. Many companies and factories close for one to two weeks and doing business as normal is practically impossible. With the celebrations also comes a whole array of decorations. Every respectable store, restaurant, hotel, company lobby, etc,.. is covered with red decorations. I took a picture of a store selling these decorations in an attempt to capture the magic that surrounds the holiday.

CCTV

One of the most striking buildings in Beijing is the new headquarters of the China Central Television. It is also one of those buildings I have tracked and watched as it evolved over the last 6 months. Its Esher-like construction is truly fascinating, just like so many things in Beijing.

Ice fun

Today I took a long walk through several of Beijing’s parks. With the recent temperature drops, the parks are opening up for ice skating. Some lakes in Beijing have stagnant water and with the windy conditions the ice is getting over 15 cm thick, safe for people to walk on the ice. Bei Hai Park was a summer playground and imperial garden for many emperors for more than 1000 years. It is located next to the Forbidden City and opened in 1925 to the public. In Bei Hai Park ice skating is not allowed but you can still hit the ice on a bingche, a chair mounted on ice-skates. The coolest thing I saw however were these ice bikes. From Bei Hai I walked to the adjacent Hou Hai park were ice skating was allowed and the lake was crowed with people having fun. Take a look at the attached pictures. One guy was clearing a stretch of ice for what might have been a swim. However, I got cold waiting for him to take a dip and decided to move on and get myself a cup of hot tea. Stay warm.

Snow in Beijing

This week I experienced my first snow day in Beijing. The snowfall was very light but still enough to blanket the city and to create some havoc on the roads. It was actually pretty to see the face of Beijing changing, especially from behind a window. It is still freezing cold outside. The max temp during the day is only -3 degrees Celsius. I admire those many cyclists trying to stay upright despite the slippery roads. It was hard for me to walk without slipping; I can only imagine how they struggle on their bikes. Snow fall is rare in Beijing as the air is very dry and there is rarely enough moisture in the air to have any form of precipitation. When it happens it creates a little bit of magic. A grey and dusty city turns beautifully white. I also loved watching the shop keepers and store owners broom their walkways. I’m used to see people shovel snow not broom it. Everywhere people were out there with these witch-brooms, it reminded me of Harry Potter. I should have taken a picture. Maybe more snow will fall in the coming weeks and I get a second opportunity. It will have to happen soon as I have only two weeks left and I'm traveling all of next week to Hangzhou-Huangshan-Jiangyin-Shanghai.

The facelift of Beijing

The speed of change keeps amazing me. It seems that over the last couple weeks, there is a remarkable acceleration in construction, remodeling, etc all over the city. The city is for sure gearing up for the Olympics and will do whatever it takes to present itself as a worldclass metropolis to the rest of the world. During the weekend, when I was taking a stroll through my neighborhood, I discovered that several small and old buildings have been demolished and are making room for new high rises. Also several DVD stores have been closed which can be seen as a sign that the government is serious about piracy. Sadly, also my favorite bakery is closed for remodeling. My district, the Chaoyang district, is home of the Olympic Green and it has plans to paint 523 buildings along the major roads that will lead to the Olympic venues. The area to be painted is roughly the size of 38,000 soccer fields. The housing complex across my office already had its new layer of paint in November. Painters seem to have a dangerous job, I took several pictures of these guys rappelling down a rope.

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year

I’m traveling home (= Cincinnati) tomorrow for the holidays and will return to Beijing on January 5th 2008. So my blog will go quiet for the next few weeks. To all my readers, I wish you the best of luck for 2008. I want to thank all of you for your encouraging and supportive messages. I have experienced some truly unique travel moments over the last 5 months but it is the friendships and the connections that I’m creating also through this blog and e-mails that I will cherish the most. I wish you all a prosperous, healthy and peaceful 2008. I’m attaching some pictures of an early Xmas celebration I was able to join in the Sichuan province last week. Looking forward to keep the blog alive next year.

Having a little bit of fun

fearsome warrior ?

Don't be fooled... toasting is a serious thing... it's all about showing respect ...a dinner or lunch can easily be interrupted a dozen times for a toast...as you see you even toast to the waitresses

I've asked if they had handcuffs... but they didn't

We all know that business travels can be stressful (delayed flights, long hours in the factories, lack of sleep, late dinners, etc), so whenever there is a chance to joke around, I’m game. I’ve found it also a perfect ice breaker and an excellent way to get to know the people. In the spirit of “going with the flow”, I’ve done my fair share of karaoke, toasting, costume dressing, playing arrested, etc… Enjoy some pictures.

What's on the menu?

Pig Tongue


Snake

There is no such thing as Chinese food. With a country as vast as China and with over a billion people, there are so many food varieties as you can imagine. There is however one truth: everything can be eaten. Over the last week, I’ve added to my check list of new-foods-eaten: snake, fried scorpions and pig tongue. Snake was not too bad, it tasted like eel. Fried scorpions were like eating unpeeled shrimp. The pig tongue? My Chinese host said it would help me speak better Chinese. I had to swallow it with a good dose of green tea. You get the picture.

Fengdu: ghost town

While traveling in the Sichuan province, I was invited to go and visit the ghost town of Fengdu. On the bank of the Yangtze River and on the Minshan Mountain, you will find series of temples that were build in the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD). The place is a representation of Chinese hell mythology. It depicts through statues, paintings and gates, the journey the dead need to take. Incorporating ideas from Taoism and Buddhism as well as traditional Chinese folk religion, Fengdu is a kind of purgatory place. Here you will be judged for your earthly (mis)deeds. At each gate or temple, you’ll have to reflect on what you have done and either a reward or punishment is waiting the dead. The Chinese folk version of the final judgment! Being on this spiritual mountain, I did follow the local customs and made some prayers and offerings according to some Taoism and Buddhist traditions.

under the weather

I was planning to keep it easy this weekend and stay in my apartment for most of the weekend. I wanted to catch up on some reading, writing, laundry, etc. I spend so little time at “home” that I sometimes feel like a stranger in my own place. Unfortunately, I had no choice as flu-like symptoms are getting the best of me. Somehow my body is telling me to take it easy and slow down. So I’m breaking new sleeping records as I slept most of Saturday. I didn’t know one could sleep so many hours. I’m drinking plenty of fluids (green tea), stuff myself with vitamin C so that by Monday morning, I’m hoping to feel much better. So far no fever yet. I do have a full week of traveling coming up with trips to Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chongqing next week. The weather in Beijing is getting colder and greyer. The winter here seems to be a little different than in North America or Europe. In addition to frigid temperatures, the air is dry and dusty. The coldest month in Beijing is January with average of minus 6-7 degrees Celsius or about 20 degrees Fahrenheit. People and especially cyclists are layering up to stay warm. In the gym I started to notice that most Chinese men are starting to wear long underwear, no luxury if the freezing wind is blowing in your face. I hibernated my bike in late October and solely rely on taxis (or walking) for transportation. When I’m not traveling across the country, I’m still going to the spinning classes 3-4 times a week. I can call myself a regular now and started to get to know a few people. There is Ned, a chubby student from New Jersey that is here to learn Chinese and lately shows up a few times a week ; there is Chil, a designer working for Lenovo from New Zealand but with Chinese parents and a few Korean girls from California here to learn Chinese as well. Most of the times, I’m still the only white guy in the room and by far the oldest. Although with grey hair and 40 years of age, I can still kick it and teach those young students a few things. Chris will know what I’m talking about. Last week, I approached one of the teachers and asked him to e-mail me one of the songs I got to like but I’m not sure if he understood what I wanted. Although I asked Ned to translate, even Ned was not sure if his Chinese was adequate to convey the request. It was a slow song in a Tibetan-like language, perfect to wind down at the end of the class. I gave him my business card but I’m still waiting to receive that e-mail. I might have to try again. Right now, I'm going to sleep a little more. To be continued.

To eat or not to eat

With Nele being a food engineer, we certainly were not going to miss checking out some colorful food stalls. Yes, you are seeing it correctly. Those are scorpions, centipedes, cockroaches, silkworms, etc…ready to be grilled on a stick, on the spot, on the go. We politely declined to taste those. I know, I know, I have been going with the flow the last 4 months and done amazing things but I do have my limits. The visual experience was enough this time. LOL

Discovering Beijing along side my little sis

Did I tell you already that I’m having a great time in Beijing? You probably figured that one out already by just reading my blog. However, everything you've read pales against the great time I had with my sister Nele this weekend in Beijing. You see, my little sis works for a food company and needed to audit some food factories nearby Beijing. Yes, Beijing of all places. I'm a lucky man, I know. Needless to say that I was thrilled to learn that she would spend a weekend with me. So we toured the classics such as the Great Wall, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, etc… but it was also totally awesome to just sit down and cherish a drink with little sis in a local Thai restaurant. Actually, little sis, is not really little. At 1.82 m and with blond hair, I had no issues spotting her in the crowd. Being tall myself (1.90 m), we were both literately sticking out the crowds. Imagine the view of the two of us together, so funny. However, with the winter approaching fast, the crowds of local and international tourists are thinning fast. It is also getting cold already in Beijing with temperatures below freezing at night. Sometimes felt we had the place (such as the Great Wall) for ourselves. I've been to the Wall serveral times now but it is never getting old. Each time, was during a different season, with different people, making each trip unique. We also had an incredible blue sky on Sunday, so we took picture after picture. Enjoy some below. I will cherish these moments forever.

Tibetan Night

When we arrived at our hotel is Wolong, we were greeted by two ladies dressed in a traditional Tibetan-looking costume. We all got a silk scarf and a little glass with liquor for a toast. That evening we also participated in roasting a whole sheep, made a fool of ourselves during karaoke, learned a few Tibetan folk dances, and tasted some more local strong drinks. Not a bad way to relax during the weekend.

Road to Wolong

After three months of cities, factories and airports, it was a dramatic change of scenery when we headed into the mountains towards Wolong to see the pandas. The air is fresh, the water is clean. China has beautiful national parks in the Sichuan province and worth a trip. The roads are still under construction and after a rainy day, quite muddy and slippery so it becomes a little bit of an adventure but at the end it was all worth it.

China Road

Last week, I went back to The Bookworm for another book talk. This time I listened to a lecture by Rob Gifford who wrote China Road, a book based upon his radio series for NPR that took him on a 4800 km hitchhiking trip across the country. He started in Shanghai and went all the way to China’s border with Kazakhstan. Along the way he interviewed and documented his encounters with Chinese farmers, Taoist monks, Uigyhr separatists, etc,… Rob mentioned that writing the book was not too difficult because there is so much happening in China that Woody Allen’s saying; “showing up is 80% of the work” rang true. I feel the same about my blog sometimes: no shortage of ideas to write about and even if I leave out any stories about all my adventures in the office. Rob started his trip as an optimist but claimed to have returned as a pessimist because of the fact that in rural China you are getting confronted with the 800 million people who still live in poverty, with the rampant corruption, with the huge environmental problems, with the widening gap between the poor and wealthy, etc,.. Did you know that there are more millionaires in China than in the US? However, he also acknowledges that over the last few decades the government had lifted 400 million people out of poverty and into the middle class. When asked to compare China with India, he agreed that he still would rather be farmer in China than in India. We all know that China is facing some huge challenges but I tend to believe that China will pull this off. The people (total Chinese population is more than 1.2 billion) are very optimistic, very entrepreneurial, very motivated, very hungry for knowledge, very driven to pursue a better life, very hard working, etc… many things I wished to see more at home in the US or Europe. We could learn from them as much as they are learning from us, but we better do it fast.

How to hug a panda?

From the city of Chengdu, a three hour bumpy car ride into the Qionglai Mountains (Sichuan Province) will bring you to the Wolong natural reserve. In collaboration with the WWF, Wolong houses the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda. The Center has over 100 pandas (= more than 70% of the world’s captive ones) and is the world largest semi-wild breeding farm. Less than 2000 pandas are believed to be living in the wild. This time of the year, the park is almost deserted and as such the local workers and volunteers have plenty of time for you. I had the incredible and once in-a life-time opportunity to go behind the scenes and touch, hug, wrestle, almost kiss the pandas. You have to see the pictures to believe it. At one time, a panda hugged me from behind (meaning he wrapped his right arm around me and his left paw on my left shoulder), I didn’t see him or her coming and I needed the help of a keeper to get free. The panda just wanted to play but I wasn’t so sure. The panda are so huggable but at the end they are still bears. Surprisingly their fur is not as soft as I expected but boy do they look cute. I’m a little in shock and still cannot believe it myself that I actually hugged a panda. This is by far the highlight of all my adventures in China. I took over 250 pictures, just couldn’t stop taking them but then the feeling of touching a panda cannot be captured in a picture or words. I wished many of you were there with me to experience it, especially my son Andreas who has a life long obsession with pandas.

a day in the park (ctd)

This couple was dancing so elegantly, so romantic. I hesitated to take pictures as I didn't want to be intrusive but then they had only eyes for each other.


These men could play, lot's of instruments I had never seen before.

Later in the afternoon, I walked upon the sax player. My feet were hurting form the walking, so I decided to sit on a bench and he started playing the most beautiful tunes I had ever heard. This one is for my son Andreas who also plays the sax now.