Bike Relief

Relief!

!

For only 40 kwai (roughly $7) for the whole day these beautiful bikes were ours. With only one flat early on in the day (easily repaired as half of the population rides on two-wheeled vehicles) we headed for the mountains.



No surprise coming from either of us that even though we havn’t been on bikes in months we decided to go climb the biggest mountain we can see. Hard, but felt so good.

Riding up the west mountains through a park called Xishan we finally felt some serious adrenaline. Honestly, riding around through traffic in the city is a big enough adrenalin rush. Chinese tourists walked along the road as we huffed and puffed our way to the top, most of them with looks of surprise and shock, followed by a smile and a shout.




The top of the mountain had a chairlift to temples further up. Reminded both of us of skiing in the states, but was a beautiful way to see the city on the other side of the lake at the bottom of the mountain.



But the best part of the day was the 5 minutes it took to get down the mountain. Flying around curves, impressing the locals and passing cars! I love going fast.

Unexpected Urban Adventures

The world teaches me the same lesson every day. Always a different scenario, yet always the same bottom line…never trust your plans. Never rest assured on an event that has not yet taken place. The world is keen, however, to not let this concept morph into a lifestyle void of planning. It’s the balance between these two ideas will continue to challenge me.

Packing for a river trip can yank one from the smokey-loud-busy-crowded-sweaty cloud that is city life to get a glimpse of the horizon. Since traveling with an 8ft bag on planes, buses and taxis is one of the most annoying activities a person can undertake, we opt to ship our kayaks and gear on a train. We’ll pick them up when we arrive several days later. The rest of the trip gear will also travel by train, but luckily we don’t have to deal with it this time.

Just as we are tying up random lose ends our last few days in Kunming I come down with the standard stomach bug that prevents any vertical activities, unless it is walking to the bathroom. Yet it is perfect timing because I’m not on a train. Adam leaves for Vietnam to renew his multi-entry visa. There goes my soup-cracker-water provider. Oh well.

Enter world: “Ha! Made ya think you were traveling soon. Well think again”

Adam returns, unable to leave China due to a mistake in Visa technicalities. Long story short we remain in Kunming for nearly 10 more days as he pleads officials, weasles out of large fines and arranges travel to Hong Kong. Suddenly kayaking is pushed further over the horizon line and we are left to amuse ourselves for another week in the city.

Ok, breathe, relax, this isn’t so bad I remind myself. The rivers aren’t going anywhere.

I’ve said that too much this year unfortunately.

So we make a point to eat different and amazingly delicious (and cheap) food every night. Even the Indian restaurant provides one of the best Mutton dishes I've ever had. Not to mention dumplings every morning for breakfast.

photo by Adam Elliot

We share a bottle of wine and walk through Green Lakes Park several evenings after dinner. Groups of musicians and singers come together to play into the night. Women practice dancing routines to song after song after song. Just behind them children rollerblade around miniature cones, each with more padding than I have ever seen on one person. Thier coaches, not wearing any safety gear, organize races and courses for them to test their maneuvering skills. All of the city seems to be in the streets and parks at night. With so much to do, I would be too.

I leave you with one of the many funny translations here. Menus are sometimes hilarious. This one, on one of the biggest banks, was surprising. Could they not find one native english speaker to translate this?

What have you done for a river lately?

Workin' hard to get people all over the world on the river. These guys are true enthusiasts.

Check out what China Daily has to say about them...

Rafting into a Niche Market by By Erik Nilsson and Chen Xiaorong (China Daily)

Citylife: Beijing part II

It is hot here. Hot like the southeast in the middle of the summer where even if you are lucky to escape the sun’s powerful rays, the air temp remains the same as moisture floats around every corner. Here in the great city of Beijing the smog and exhaust make this feeling even worse. Men roll their shirts up, revealing rolly-polly bellies. Women wave their fans briskly in front of their faces. But it does not stop them, people move and work and travel in this swealtering heat. Perhaps it is preferable to the other seasons, of which I have not yet experienced.

I escape the heat associated with traffic by spending time in city parks. Here I can see what the people do in their free time, one of my indicating factors of the quality of life in a place. Both here and in Kunming, groups of old men gather together with complicated wheels, thick cords and delicate kites. Using the winds, they fly their kites and smoke their cigarettes, probably grumbling about their wives, the heat or other small annoyances that strike them in their old age.

Other people sit around concrete tables playing cards or Majong, the famous tile game seen throughout China. Some sit alone, playing an instrument or crooning a traditional song. No matter the hour of the day, it never fails that the park is full of people taking part in many different activities, none of which are work related or stress inducing. Buried in a city pumping with business, commercialism and progress, it is refreshing to see people relaxing and enjoying the spaces in between.

One afternoon we swam in a community pool where my friends held a membership to maintain physical and mental stability while surrounded by the concrete and steel of a city. Small children with failing bathing suits and foam strapped to their torsos shouted and splashed. Hearing these kids speak a language as foreign as Mandarin makes my minimal comprehension completely void. How can anyone distinguish their words? One day.

The life guard notified us upon entry that we were to purchase swim caps in order to enter the water. This made me laugh as although they were seemingly required for sanitary reasons, the caps were made from bathing suit materialand frequently failed to cover the majority of the swimmer’s heads. We, however, complied with smiles.

As we bobbed and chatted, breaking to swim a few laps, a young Chinese boy silently floated next to us. Although he couldn’t understand anything we said, he continued to follow us around the pool as if he had come there with us. He simply watched us, not attempting to communicate, not observing any norms of personal space or privacy. We were in a public pool after all.

Now the time has come to travel south to Kunming, where Last Descents’ office and gear is located. Between urban traveling, retrieving kayak from left luggage, checking overweight and oversized baggage and waiting while security double checks our bags, we cut it as close as you possibly can to catching our flight. I vow to never let it happen again. Right.

Here in Kunming we continue the preparation and work. While Adam toils away with design work and trip planning, I struggle with the lack of computer (eventually maguivering a wire job on the power source of an extra laptop I can then use) and read as much as possible. When we are at the office, I spend time down in the street, with local shop owners and friends kicking around a Jienza—a type of hackysack made of metal disks and feathers. It is a wonderful way to pass time in a foreign environment.

We plan to take a train to Qinghai in a few days, once LD’s trip gear is loaded onto a shipping train and Adam has gone down to Vietnam to renew his Visa. While meandering through a local bookstore I came across a Qinghai Province photo essay . Mountains, valleys, colors, people, festivals, monasteries, tradition and beauty filled every image. Excitement elevated off the charts.

Citylife: Beijing

Beijing, the city that goes on forever through both time and space.

The Forbidden City, not so forbidden anymore.

We file in with the hundreds of Chinese, cameras and fans in hand, to walk through the massively thick and intimidating doors to this ancient city of palaces. The square opens up, revealing large, ornate walls surrounding a largely vacant plaza. Not even the flood of bodies pouring into this space can begin to fill it.

We close our eyes, leaving the image of the plaza in our minds and imagine the sort of elaborate processions, festivals and celebrations held here when the city was still forbidden. I want to see that. The colors, the costumes, the spectacles. My eyes open to see a group of Chinese wearing the same bright yellow hat, dragging children, eating popsicles and following a tiny man with a yellow flag held high. A modern-day procession I suppose.

The enclosed city continues for what feels like forever, especially in the hot, humid air. Ancient gardens and smaller palaces dedicated to thinking or meditating surround the larger centers. Every stairway, roof corner and dividing wall display different forms of colorful expression of culture and art from centuries ago. Statues guard the entrances, mosaic pictures form the garden path, carved dragons tell a story along the stairs.

There is too much to see and not enough time to truly appreciate its importance in the history of this place. Like many overly-visited historical sites, meaning slips away with lines, tickets, gift shops, glass enclosures, restorations, bottled water and tourist maps. Now it stands as the skeleton of a once mysterious, magical and fascinating place. This being said, I can still close my eyes, knowing where I stand and imagine the spectacle around me in its true form. No book, movie or picture will ever allow me to come that close to such a distant time and place.

Aside from the Forbidden Palace, my week in Beijing was not filled with guide book driven trips. Instead, I moved through the city with Adam as he checked items off his list, ran errands and accomplished the required tasks to be able to fly south to Kunming. We traveled 2 hours to the outskirts of the city—that probably continue for another 2 hours—to visit a factory where rafts are made. These small, two-person crafts carry “adventure-seekers” down a short and controlled section of water. With no paddles and a cheap vest awkwardly filled with foam the guests hold onto the rope and splash each other on their brief descent. This is how the Chinese see rafting. Incredible. They don’t understand the exploration of natural features, the movement and control of a vessel through varying currents, the thrill of accomplishment or the peace of a vast and epically beautiful place. Hopefully Last Descents will change this.

China: 2nd Round

View from the Beijing apartment balcony

I land for the third and last time in Beijing International Airport. A pleasantly smooth journey with quick transitions in the busy cities of San Francisco and Tokyo, each leg began and ended nearly on time. The time between these transitions passed without frustrations or inconveniences, but also without the time warp associated with sleeping for 8 hours on a 10-hour plane ride. Instead I adopted every possible position a narrow airplane seat might offer for 20-30 minute periods, like Goldilocks in military barracks painfully testing each of the 100 beds for the perfect one. The eight hours of sleep lost the night prior were thus not found.
The last leg, Tokyo to Beijing, sleep continued to elude me this time due to the speed of thoughts.

I’m about to be in China again.
I have just flown to the other side of the world—with my kayak—to traipse around new places in a country I never expected to love so much.
I’m about to see Adam and other friends again.
I have almost no idea where we will be going or when.
I can’t speak Mandarin.
I can pass the time however I please because this time in China, I’m on vacation.
The next meal I eat will be with chopsticks, as well as every other meal after that for 6 weeks.
And so on…

And now I'm here!

attraction of knowledge

An decent update from my time here in China is in the works (considering computing and connecting issues are abundant in this part of the world), but just a quick note of excitement...



i was given this book by a friend over a year ago not aware of how perfect it would fit into my life only a year later.  I forget the original context of the recommendation, but Carl bestowed 1491 to me aparently with the idea that it was a book i needed to read, or should read or even would like to read.  Now, as a high school history and biology teacher who strives to present the most accurate, controversial and thought-provoking material to my students, Charles Mann's words repeatedly spark my thought processes. 

The obvious connection can be made to my American History curriculum.  Although I must follow a set curriculum, I find an explanation of the past critical to understanding the present.  Themes involving imperialist actions of different cultures, both foreign and domestic, combined with resources analysis and explanation of the former natural enviroment allow questions to be presented involving the nature of man.  World History correlates even more so by drawing conclusions regarding populations and cultures unknown to much of recent historical analysis.  The author even presents biologicla concepts as case studies.  This type of evidence demonstrates the connection of these concepts to the real world throughout time.

Can you tell I'm excited?

I hope books like this keep falling into my path.  They are often the most valuable to me at the present moment and thus more meaningful.