Jiuzhaigou

Jiuzhaigou is easily the most beautiful place I have ever been. On Sunday we took a ten hour bus ride there and spent two nights with a Tibetan family on top of a mountain. We learned  a lot. For example, just because it isn't snowing in Chengdu doesn't mean it isn't snowing a few hours north/10,000 feet above Chengdu. I'll explain more soon.

Anyway, we got to the family's home and the grandmother cooked us dinner while we played with the grandson. He's 2 and a half and speaks fluent Mandarin and Tibetan. The grandmother's Chinese was about on par with mine and Alyssa's, so communicating was not difficult. We drank tea and ate their homemade bread topped with their own homemade honey. Dinner consisted of potatoes, more bread and honey, dried yak meat, and rice. Afterward, the oldest son came home and served us some of their (homemade) barley wine. It tasted a lot like some of the alcohol I tried when I was in Laos. (BTW, at this point still no snow).

After the barley wine was gone, we climbed up to the third floor of their cabin to find our room and went to sleep. I must have been really cold all night because I had multiple dreams about blankets, and when I woke up in the morning, I felt like I was going to die. No heat in the cabin, and there was a permanently cracked window in our room.

We ate breakfast at 7:00 am, before the sun came up. We had eggs, hot bread with honey, and (ugh) yak butter tea. Yak butter tea=liquid bleu cheese (basically). When we walked outside, we realized that the entire mountain was covered in snow and that the snow was still coming down pretty hard. And that's how our 8 hour hike started.

That's all I have time to write about today, but I will put pictures up as soon as my internet is better. I would recommend checking out my latest facebook pictures, if you're interested.

Chengdu: First Day

Alyssa and I caught a cab at 5:45 this morning for the airport. By 10:30, we were settled into our hostel in Chengdu! Our hostel is in a great location, similar to the hutongs in Beijing. For lunch we had 担担面 (Sichuan Noodles) and 包子 (Baozi). The food here is super spicy and super delicious. After lunch we walked around a bit and watched a man make dragons/flowers out of melted sugar by dripping it onto wax paper.









After exploring our neighborhood, we took a cab to the major shopping area. It was packed, but I guess this is a city of 9 million people.... Hopefully tomorrow we'll go see some pandas. Cross your fingers for good weather for us. Also, Gabe and Kelsey are meeting us tomorrow! I love hanging out with people from school in random Chinese cities.

Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs

I've been feeling a bit off lately, so I decided (with the encouragement of Matthew) to try out traditional Chinese medicine. After discussing my symptoms with the doctor, she stared at my tongue and took my pulse like five times. She then wrote out the longest prescription I have ever seen. The product of this prescription was nine little bags of bitter, brown liquid. I am to drink one bag after every meal for the next three days.

After she wrote the prescription, we began the process of acupuncture. I was freaking out, but after a few minutes, there were 14 needles sticking out of various places in my body. It really hurt when she put the needles between my big toe and the toe next to it as well as between my thumbs and fingers. They stopped hurting almost immediately though. I was also pretty creeped out by the needles in my elbows. After 25 minutes, she took the needles out and gave me instructions for drinking my herbs. I have to put the bag in boiling water before I drink it.

Results? I'm sleeping better. I went into my second acupuncture appointment today, meaning I currently have 28 holes in my skin. I'm going to stick with it for a while.

Side note: I had the most awesome cab driver today! We talked about French colonialists in Kunming and in Louisiana for like thirty minutes!

Love y'all!

Dynamic Yunnan

Last night we went to dinner at a restaurant called "La Gare du Sud"-- the building (or rather buildings) used to be a French train station. It was beautiful. The food was typical Yunnan style: lots of rice noodles, lots of mushrooms, and lots of fried dough.

After dinner, we walked to the theater to see Dynamic Yunnan, a beautiful musical that meshes together a lot of the cultures of Yunnan's 25 ethnic minority groups. I know what you're thinking, smiling minorities waving and dancing? come on... but this was not like any of the other "minority spectacles" that I've been subjected to in this country. The costumes, dancing, and music were all unbelievable, and everything was a lot more contemporary than I was expecting. They even had a scene where a bunch of teenagers of the Dai ethnic minority get drunk and dance and flirt until the sun comes up and all of the males have to carry all of the females back home. The whole time, everybody is singing traditional Dai folk songs. There was a scene with over 60 drums on stage, one of them being played by a three year old girl. The same three year old girl also sang a children's folk song toward the end. The most beautiful part of the show was probably the Peacock "epilogue" where a woman wore a beautiful dress that resembled peacock feathers and used her hands and arms to make the most beautiful/sophisticated ...shadow puppets I have ever seen.

http://www.dynamicyunnan.com/en/intro.htm

Check out the website if you are interested. They actually do shows all around the world.

I would see this a million times.

Lazy Sunday Afternoons

I've definitely been failing at updating my blog with interesting stuff. I was hoping that I'd be able to tell you all about the Christian Miao Village later tonight, but due to horrible weather conditions, our trip was canceled. ;_;

I've felt a twinge of homesickness lately, so to cheer myself up I've compiled a list of things that I'm going to miss about China when I come home in two months.

1. Egg Pancakes. In Qingdao, egg pancakes ran about 1.5kuai. Last night I walked all the way to Kundu (the bar area of Kunming) with two guys from my program just to get egg pancakes. Turns out in Kunming (or Kundu at 2:00 am, rather) they are 5 kuai. It's totally worth it though. The woman/man at the stand pours about a million gallons of oil onto a skillet followed by dough for a crepe/pancakeish thing. After a few seconds, she tears a hole in the middle of the pancake and cracks an egg into it. After it's all done cooking, spicy redbean paste is brushed onto it, and you are guaranteed a fabulous five minutes in heaven followed by an entire night of heartburn.

2. Kites. I know we have kites in America, but you really don't understand how wonderful kites are until you've been to China. It's totally normal to see 20 or so old men flying kites next to a 1000 year old building. Here's a picture that I took in Xi'an during the summer of 2009. You can see the kites to the left.








3. Vegetables and Fruits. The vegetables/fruits here are so wonderful and so cheap.

4. Shrubs being used as brooms.

5. KTV (Karaoke). Yes, I know that we have Karaoke in America, but it's not cool in America. I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm back home and it's a Saturday and I can't sing my heart out to R. Kelly or whatever disturbing music is available in the KTV computer.

I will be adding to this list soon.

Catching Up: KTV etc...

With Alyssa at the Tibetan Restaurant

 We are really getting along as a group, and we've all gotten close to all of our Chinese roommates. Also, karaoke is huge in China. HUGE.

Karaoke with classmates- we get really into it.

Me and 李明 at Kundu

I have a week and a half before midterms, and then Alyssa and I are going to Chengdu for a week! I'm really excited. Also, I'm going to a Christian Miao (Hmong) village on Sunday! I will be sure to take lots of pictures to post.