Sunday, October 26, 2008

Beijing 2008 Olympic Village

Aside from spending time with Steve, the highlight of the Beijing stay this time around was visiting the Olympic sites.  The Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube are open to the public to visit and I was able to spend a lot of time walking around and inside these two phenomenal venues.  You can’t really appreciate the design and architecture of the Bird’s Nest until you stand right under it.  I was just amazed at how someone was able to come up with the idea of a stadium like that and how it was actually able to be fully executed.  Once we got inside, I did a lap around the track and then just sat down in the middle of the field and chatted with my friends and some Chinese people who were equally in awe at the grandeur of the Nest.  I went back a couple of days later to check out the Water Cube and in the short time had a few thoughts racing through my head: First, “this is where Michael Phelps and the U.S. Men’s swim team owned the world,” and second, “if Dad were here, I’m sure he would have put his jammer on under his clothes in the hotel, would have found a phone booth inside the stadium and pulled a Superman. He would have stripped down and fought through security, jumped over bleachers, and dove in the pool, once again showing American dominance in the water.” I actually thought a lot of that up just right now, but I did imagine my dad drooling at the sight of the pristine water.








Beijing

Our trip ended with a five day stay in Beijing which was a blast.  We visited the Forbidden City which was the Emperor’s pad--it was huge!  I could not believe how big the city was. We visited the Summer Palace which was the summer home for those who were sick of the Forbidden City.  It is the ultimate summer home. The emperors knew what was going on.  I was able to meet up with my Uncle Steve one night for dinner with my friend Wen Xun and a few of his current and former law students.  Steve’s students obviously have a lot of respect for him and love him as a teacher; it was really cool to see some of the people that he has been able to influence here.  A few days later, I met up with Steve again and we walked around some of the alleys around his place and had lunch.  It has been really great to see be in China and spend time with family.


Summer Palace    

Forbidden City


Steve, Moi, Wen Xun
Uncle Steve, Yours Truly

Xian

Xian was a fascinating city.  Xian is home of the Terra-cotta warriors which are these 8,000 individual and unique pottery soldiers.  The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, had this army built and buried to protect him after he died. Qin Shi Huang was a very power hungry fellow who became emperor at the age of 13 and essentially created China--He united several different countries into one China; standardized China’s language, monetary system, and measuring system; and connected several separate walls into the Great Wall of China to keep invading countries out.  Apparently, he was also very paranoid--he must have been to have all of these Terra-cotta soliders to protect him...in the after-life.





Another highlight of our trip to Xian was a visit to an orphanage run by an LDS woman from South Africa.  This orphanage currently houses over 20 young children who are between 24 days and five years old. These children all have physical disabilities and were thus abandoned by their parents.  The 13 “aunties” of the orphanage care for the children who undergo surgeries and treatment until they are placed with an adoptive family that can be either Chinese or not.  When we were there, a three-year old girl left to be placed with a couple from Holland.  It was really touching to see the “aunty” of this girl just sob because her child was leaving.  Being at the orphanage was a very neat experience and reminded me that there are a lot of people doing a lot of good in the world.



Luoyang






Yup, that is indeed a monk texting while on duty at the White Horse Temple...


Oh yeah, I also got a haircut before I left.  I figured I'd get a sneak preview of what I'm going to look like in a few years...

Ten Day Trip Intro

On October 16, my classmates and I left Nanjing to spend 10 days traveling around various parts of China.  While traveling we spent a total of three nights on sleeper trains which believe me is an adventure.  My favorite part about the sleeper trains is waking up at 6:30 in the morning to bright lights, the blaring radio overhead, and people speaking in their normal tone of voice which would be loud enough to hear perfectly well if you were at Autzen Stadium and 59,000 were watching highlights of Dennis Dixon on Duckvision (the jumbotron video screen.) Wow I really miss Dennis Dixon and Oregon Football...  In all seriousness, I actually did sleep pretty well on the trains and have fun memories of being with my classmates and making friends with our fellow Chinese travelers.  SInce we were gone for 10 days and I took over 400 pictures, I’ll split these next few entries up and try to explain a bit what we saw.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

National Holiday in Beijing

I have never been surrounded by so many people.  During the week when the Chinese are off of school and work to celebrate the birth of the People's Republic of China and the Communist Party, it seemed as though I joined the rest of China by hopping on a train and heading to Beijing.  I left Nanjing last Saturday with my friend James, rode a 10-hour overnight train, and then started a non-stop week around the nation's capital. It was great to see my uncle Steve, if for only a few hours.  I also got to spend a lot of time with Wen Xun, one of my closest friends from my mission in Paris.  The highlight of the week was without a doubt scaling the Great Wall.  We went to a section that even a lot of Chinese don't know about that is about 2 1/2 hours outside of Beijing.  I was amazed that the Chinese even felt that a wall was necessary!  The terrain was so mountainous that adding a wall was just adding insult to injury.  I mean, if an army can get over all of those mountains, they deserve to win any battle.  In this slideshow you will see some pictures that will hopefully show how massive, ancient, and great that wall really is.


I am actually going back to Beijing in two weeks with my study abroad group and we will spend more time around Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Olympic village, etc... So this week was just a chance to see some of the sights we will not get to see later on and an opportunity to try to experience how the Beijing people really live. It was a great week and after a somewhat miserable train ride home last night sitting in an upright chair for 12 hours, I'm excited for my own bed!

This next slideshow is a compilation of pictures that I took around Beijing (Tianmen Square, Beihai Park, a modern art exhibit called 798, Lama Temple, and other random things).



Sunday, September 21, 2008

Huangshan



I have only been in China for just less than a month now, but I can boldy say this: If you go to China and you do not see Huangshan, you missed out. Big time.

The Chinese say that if you see Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), you do not need to see other mountains because you've seen it all. Well I saw Huangshan and their claim is pretty accurate. I do plan on seeing other mountains during my life, but I can't imagine any scene being quite as spectacular as what I saw this last weekend. It was that amazing.

Hiking Huangshan is nothing like the zig-zag dirt trails that every other mountain the world has.  Rather, to scale Huangshan you must take the ridiculously steep cement staircase. I'm not quite sure how those stairs were laid (all I know is that Chinese labor laws are very different than American) but just looking at the seemingly never-ending stairs was breathtaking. Walking them was also breathtaking, for an entirely different reason.  And I totally enjoyed every step.

Not only did I enjoy running up and down the incredibly steep stairs, I also enjoyed the heat and the humidity!  I can honestly say that I don't ever remember being as sweaty as I was after hiking Huangshan.  I'm sure there was at least one time when I sweated more; I just don't remember it. It's a Barnes thing.

We ended up hiking to the tops of several different peaks with each view as magnificent as the next.  The mountains were so majestic that they looked fake--almost like Disneyland's Splash Mountain. Our guides pointed out different rock formations and how they resembled different animals. For example, I saw a couple of turtles, a monkey, and a rabbit! I thought I saw rocks in the form of Yao Ming, but apparently it was just the altitude toying with my mind.

I've posted some pictures from our Huangshan excursion. I took some of these pictures but most were taken by others--after taking about 15 pictures my battery died on me, naturally.  The pictures are incredible, but they honestly do not do any justice to what I saw.  I still need to get other pictures from some friend so I'll post those to the slideshow as soon as I can.