Solar-Powered Tea Kettle

I climbed a mountain the other weekend with my English friend Andy. The scenery was pretty, the weather was ok, and climbing was fun, but the best part of the trip (besides finally speaking English and freely complaining about teaching methods at the university) was visiting an old man who lives on the mountain and keeps up a Buddhist temple.



Andy and I stopped to say hi to this guy, and we ended up sitting and talking to him for a while. The main subject of our conversation was this cool contraption that the man has set up. Since he has no electricity, he has this reflector panel that concentrates the sun’s rays on the bottom of a tea kettle, and this is how he boils water. (And I thought frying ants with a magnifying glass was BA…)

It just so happened that as we arrived at his home, he was putting the kettle on. As we finished our conversation, the water was just starting to boil. Perfect timing.

This man was really baffled as to why I kept asking about how he boils water, and Andy also doesn’t think it’s cool as I do... What do you think?

Travel Update

It's hard to get online while traveling! Here's a quick update of what I've been up to and where I plan to go:

After staying with my friend Bei, I took a bus to Yulin where there is a cool section of the Great Wall as well as some rock gorges that have Buddhist temples in them. From Yulin I took a bus to Taiyuan where my friend Lei lives. We visited the ancient city of Pingyao together.

From Taiyuan I took a train to Datong and saw the "hanging temples" on a mountainside as well as more Buddhist caves. I arrived in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, where I am currently, by train from Datong yesterday afternoon.

This afternoon I'm taking a train to Baotou, also in Inner Mongolia. From Baotou I would like to take a train overnight to Tongliao, then on to Shenyang, and then to Dandong. Dandong is on the border with North Korea and seems like a very interesting city. After Dandong, I plan to go to Beijing and stay for a few days before flying home!

Based on the past few weeks of traveling, I'm sure these plans will change!

Hua Shan

When I flew into Xi'An on Sunday, I met up with Dustin who I studied with in Lanzhou. His brother flew out here from Canada, and the three of us spent two days climbing a mountain. Hua Shan is about a two-hour bus ride east of Xi'An and is a beautiful rocky and tree-covered mountain.



We started climbing at about 8 a.m. on Monday morning, and we reached the top that evening. At the bottom, we walked up an incline, which turned into stairs, which turned into footholds in the rock with a chain to hold on to. The precipices were almost vertical.



We spent the night at a monastary at the top of the mountain. After climbing all five of the highest peaks and using harnesses to traverse some difficult parts, we headed back down the mountain to take a bus back to Xi'An.



Hua Shan is beautiful. When we were climbing the mountain, we were practically the only ones around. But we discovered that there is a gondola from the very bottom of the mountain to the very top. So after a day of rough climbing, we were tired and looking forward to enjoying the scenery. But it was difficult with throngs of Chinese tourists in high heels, dresses, and parasols, yelling on their cell phones. I think the gondola was a bad idea. Also, the beauty of the mountain was partly destroyed by litter. These same make-up clad tourists threw their custard pie wrappers where ever they pleased. It's slightly upsetting.



Even still, I enjoyed Hua Shan and the company of my Canadian friends. But my legs are extremely sore...

...Still in Chengdu

I'm still in Chengdu, but I did go to Leshan and Emei Shan like I wanted.

When I arrived in Leshan, I met a high school girl who showed me a place to see the giant Buddha from the city. So I didn't go to the park. Suckers, haha.



I climbed part-way up Emei Shan and stayed overnight with a family who lives on the mountain. The mountain is full of bamboo, waterfalls, animals, and insects. The noise is almost deafening and the insects are huge. For example, the butterflies are as big as birds. The next morning, it was pouring rain. I was obviously soaked from head to toe as the climbed the mountain, but the worst part of the rain was that the monkeys didn't come out. I was pretty disappointed that I didn't get to see any. I even had a bamboo stick to hit them with in case they attacked me, which apparently is what they do to mountain climbers.

I came back to Chengdu hoping to immediately go to the city of Kunming, to the south of Chengdu. I found out that there are no train tickets to Kunming for ten days. I'm working on a plan involving air travel, but traveling by plane in China is no fun and is expensive.

Chengdu

I have been in Chengdu for a few days now. My first two days here were great. I walked around the city, ate Sichuan food, went to a tea house, visited a Buddhist monastery where I made friends with a monk, and hung out with the other students staying in the hostel I'm staying at. But on Monday I got really sick and couldn't even leave the hostel. So for the past few days I've been reading books. When I get better, I want to go to Leshan where I can see a giant Buddha statue, and then go to Emei. Emei is a holy Buddhist mountain that takes two or three days to climb. And there are monkeys there!

Dunhuang

Last week I did not have class on Thursday or Friday because of a holiday in China similar to Labor Day. For some reason, the school decided that Friday's classes would be rescheduled for Sunday. They can't do that, can they? Haha...

So my friends and I also took Wednesday off (as well as Sunday- who goes to class on Sunday?) to travel to the north of Gansu Province to the city of Dunhuang.

We took a sleeper-train on Tuesday night and arrived in Dunhuang on Wednesday morning. Dunhuang is a tourist city, which we're not used to. Luckily, it was the off season. The busy season started the next day, though. We saw some Buddhist caves as well as sections of the Great Wall.



The part of the Great Wall that we saw had not been reconstructed, which seems miraculous since everything else in China has been. We saw one pass of the wall which was pretty much a square boulder with a hole in it. There was a fence around it, so it wasn't that exciting. The second part of the wall we saw was made with mud, rocks, and hay. Because of the wind in the desert, some parts were only a few feet high. Most of the wall here was surrounded by a fence, but a small portion was not. It still wasn't that exciting, but how could I visit China without seeing part of the original Great Wall?




Thursday afternoon we rode camels out into the Gobi Desert and camped out in tents for the night. (Camels really do spit, and they smell bad, too.) The sand dunes were huge. We picked the highest one and climbed to the top. It took several hours and was extremely difficult because the sand was so soft. We climbed up peak after peak, gradually getting to the highest one. It was difficult to breathe at the top, but when we got there, we watched the "sunset."


That's in quotation marks because in some parts of China, it's not damaging to the eyes to stare directly at the sun. It looks like a bright, full moon, actually. As for the sunset, the sun disappeared in the polluted sky well above the horizon.



There are no words to aptly describe the Gobi Desert. It's how you might imagine it, though. Sandy, dry, few living creatures, etc. It's hot during the day and cold at night. In fact, when my friends and I climbed the sand dunes, we climbed along the ridges. One half of our bodies were hot from the sun, and the other half was cold. Some parts of the desert stretch for miles in complete flatness. Other parts, near the edges, are miles of sand dunes.

So we left Dunhuang on Friday tired and sore as well as sun burnt, sand burnt, and wind burnt. But it was definitely worth it.

Bing Ling Si

I went on a day-trip on Saturday with my friend Dustin from Canada. Dustin planned out the excursion: Starting in Lanzhou, we would travel to the city of Liu Jia Xi where we would take a boat to our final destination of Bing Ling Si.

Bing Ling Si is a Buddhist community southwest of Lanzhou. The main attraction is hundreds of small caves with Buddhist carvings.

Dustin and I met at 7:30 in the morning and took a bus from the university to western Lanzhou. Finding the west bus station was a journey of its own, so it was a good thing that our next bus didn't leave until 9:00.

The bus ride from Lanzhou to Liu Jia Xi was two hours. Public buses in the cities are dirty, crowded, and uncomfortable for long distances, but this bus was clean and had padded seats. The ride was quite enjoyable, especially because of the beautiful views of the county side.

Liu Jia Xi is a small city. Dustin and I think we were the only foreigners there, not to mention that few foreigners ever visit. Foreigners are more common in Lanzhou because it is the capital of the Gansu province and has several universities. We still get stares and "hellos" in Lanzhou, but in Liu Jia Xi we were met with gasps, pointing fingers, and people yelling "wai guo ren" (foreigners). A young girl even approached us with an offer for us to visit to her home. She recited some English sentences she had memorized, but it was apparent that she knew no English.

Dustin and I walked around Liu Jia Xi and had lunch. Then we took a taxi to the marina. We could have easily walked the distance, but we didn't actually know where the marina was. We had walked to the Yellow River at the south end of town but couldn't find it.

Unfortunately, Dustin and I were the only patrons of the marina on Saturday, so the boat ride was expensive. On the positive side, we had the 12 passenger boat to ourselves so we were able to take many pictures, and in my case, video.

The boat ride was one hour long and took us south on the Yellow River. The river is surrounded by mountains and is stunning.



Bing Ling Si is even more stunning. It would be an injustice to attempt to accurately describe the landscape. The mountains, the river, the walkways, the bridges, the caves, the Buddhist carvings and statues are all gorgeous. Bing Ling Si is a photographer's dream. Between the two of us, I think Dustin and I took over 300 photos.

As I previously mentioned, I brought my video camera along. I shot plenty of cover video and B roll, but the neatest tape I have taken so far in China is of Dustin and me being attacked by women and children selling jewelry and trinkets when we entered and left Bing Ling Si. The only English they know is hello, beautiful, and fifty (dollars). We spoke to them in Chinese and bargained with them for jewelry made by the Buddhist monks. (They kept saying "monkey" in English. Dustin and I know "monkey" in Chinese, so we said that back to them. Until we figured out that they meant "monk" both sides were confused about why the other would be talking about monkeys!)

We stayed at Bing Ling Si for just over an hour, and then Dustin and I took the boat back up the Yellow River to the Liu Jia Xi marina. We knew we were cutting it close on time- the last bus back to Lanzhou leaves Liu Jia Xi at 5:00. Buses are usually late, so we weren't too concerned that it was a few minutes before 5:00 by the time we docked. We speed-walked back toward town, but gave up and hitchhiked. On the way, we saw our bus to Lanzhou coming at us. The driver of our vehicle stopped in the middle of the road, honked, and waved the bus down. Luckily for us, the bus stopped to let us on.

This bus was crowded. Dustin and I didn't have actual seats, but we sat in the aisles and the front of the bus by the driver. Whereas the first bus ride seemed shorter than two hours, this one seemed longer. But we made it safely back to Lanzhou and to the university.

Because of recent events in China, traveling has been heavily restricted and is ill-advised. But because of the proximity and demographics of Bing Ling Si, Dustin and I felt it was safe to travel. Other popular destinations near Lanzhou, however, are closed to travelers. Hopefully things will calm down soon, because I'm already itching to go on some more weekend trips. Travel in China is easy and affordable because of the public buses and trains, and it would be a shame to stay in and study every weekend, especially as the temperature warms up!