Fenghuangshan

Yeah..say that three times fast.
Anyway, on Sunday I went up to Fenghuangshan, which means "phoenix mountain" with my Dad. Its maybe a three or four hour drive from where we live.
It was a great time, an awesome hike, super pretty, and excessively vertical.
I took six zillion pictures.


Here is a rough map of where we were.
We didnt really know where we were going, bar up.
So we followed some people as non threateningly as possible, and made up the rest.



There was a temple, of course.



Randomly, there was a dressed up monkey in a stupid hat.
Shortly after I took this picture, the monkey went berserk and tried to kill the guy its attached to. Cant really say I blame it.
look at that hat.
I strongly dislike monkeys.


We found the stairs!



Which quickly turned into this...



Which eventually turned more into this.



Which led to incredible views like this.
Awesome...



These pictures are not in order.
You can only expect so much from me.
This is Phoenix Hole, a neat little cave with a shrine in it.



I like this picture alot.

Divine wisdom...come to me!

Ok. So maybe not.

I'll be waiting, though.

The whole "hike" was full of stuff like this.

Sometimes you didnt even know where the path was, except for some niches in the rock.

More neat stuff.

Howdy.

Gosh, I love my rho lt.

(sorry...)

Traditionally, you have your name and your true love's name engraved on one of these locks and lock it up here for eternity. Dunno what you do with the key though.

Hi there daddy-man.

All the trees were turning lovely colors.

Ill have to go back later in October, when its real ridiculous.

You can see (sort of) where we hiked..the path runs all along the tops of these 'peaks'.

If it were a clear day you can see fooooooorrrrrreeeeeevvvvveeeerrr.

Or at least to North Korea.

Then you probably need a permit.

Maybe my favorite pic of the lot.

How much more Chinese does this get?

Fenghuangshan is a warm up for me, since Ill be climbing Huashan in about a week. We leave for Xi'an early morning the day after tomorrow. Im super exited. Go youtube huashan if you want.

In other news, I have a mild cold, I ate eggplant for dinner, and Koreans make great smelling shampoo.

Domestic Adventure goodness

Today I did laundry. And I went to the grocery store. And Ikea.

It was an adventure.

Because in China, everything is an adventure.

Ikea was depressingly normal.

Mostly. Chinese people will come there sometimes just to hang out.

They will bring lunch, tea, books, knitting, etc, and just lounge around in the displays.

They take pictures of each other looking cute with stuffed animals.

Also there was a giant bin of fluffy sheepskins.

Im starting a collection of pictures of ugly little dogs.

This one was clean enough, but looked like it had run into a wall.


Frank is most likely explaining some complicated word to Dad.

Or maybe telling him we're lost.

Its all the same.

The grocery store is one of my favorite places to go.

Because of things like this.

These are straws.

On the front of the package it says "The cup uses the sucker."

Or, if youre in a more artistic mood.

"The bottle uses the sucker"

Sea cucumber wine.

Sea cucumbers look like rotten, semi-inappropriate pickels.

And they wiggle.

They're very expensive.

This is our faithful Chinese washing machine.

Technically its a drier too, but we dont talk about that.

Everything is in Chinese.

We have a diagram.

Sort of.

Also, it has lots of lights and makes happy little noises.

Like its exited to do your laundry.

This is the real drier.

Theres a neat technological marvel where we can raise and lower these poles with a crank.

Its super.

I convieniently did not hang up my underwear for the purpose of this photo.

Everything dries very...crisply.

HALP! Laundry are eatin me!

A Drive in the Country

Wherein Rae and Mamma Rae and Mamma Rae's friend get rather lost.

The other day Mom and Vicki and Frank (our helpful driver) went on a quest for the idyllic hamlet of Lizhifang, where, according to some magazine they had found, one would stroll among the streets where farmers and fishermen were painting lovely quaint folk-style art in the shade of giant chestnut trees.

In reality, Lizhifang is a pretty standard rural Chinese village, kinda dirty, rather disorganized, and hot and dusty. No chestnut trees were to be found, nor were there any farmers whiling away the hours with paint and brushes. Nor did anyone anywhere know anything about that there paintin stuff. After Frank asked maybe 25 people, we did find a gallery (sort of) where there was some of said art. It was rather interesting.

This is Frank.

He's very polite and helpful.

He most likely thinks we're nuts.

We also were invited to the home of a man whose wife does fabric cuts in the style of these paintings. It was a brief trip, but interesting nonetheless.

We left there and went for a drive into the country.

It was really a lovely day.

Until we couldnt find the way back onto the highway.
And this randon man (see his back, on the motorcycle) offered to take us to a shortcut.

In exchange for a cigarette.

We ended up on a super rocky road out in BFE.

*see urbandictionary.com if you dont know what that stands for

But we saw some parts of a really rural village.


This cool big basket was laying on the side of the road.

(Road pictured here is not a good example of what we were driving on)

And in the end, it all worked out fine.

And Ill live to blog another day. Great.

Beijing

Sooooo.... last weekend the folks and I went to Beijing...its only a short plane ride away. We saw more non-Chinese than we have in a while, ran around like mad trying to fit everything in in four days and did our best not to piss off any uniformed guards. There sure are alot of those buggers.

National Day is coming up on the 1st of October-60th aniversary of the founding of the PRC. Theyre going to have one hell of a celebration everywhere, but especially in Beijing, including a parade with enough people in it to fill a small country.

Anyway, going to Beijing also unleashed my hidden agenda, to go on a tour of the city's rather extensive big wig architeture and ook out about that. It sort of happened.

So I took about 350 pictures in four days. Heres some decent shots.

Here's my breakfast. Its delicious. I managed not to wear most of it.

Beijing is full of bicycles. And other stuff, but mostly bicycles.

Lots and lots and lots.

This is my face irritatingly stuck in front of the National Theater.

There will be a post just about architecture in Beijing, with pictures sans my face.

These are some things you cant do at the National Theater.

We took the metro. It was all sorts of sardine like.
In its defense, it got better later.

We went out to olympic park. It was pretty and clean and utterly deserted except for tourists. This lovely little tree/pond/fish thing was there, right by the metro.

The grass is smiling at you.

If you dont know what this is, youre rather silly. Or you live in the woods with no tv. Which is possible. But in that case, why are you online?

Bird's Nest lanterns to match the stadium.

Bubbly membrane goodness. There will be an architeture post to show the six zillion photos I took inside this. Cause its just that sweet.

A rare sight in China- an empty street!

Its because this place is deserted...its very odd and a little melancholy.

Dinner was awesome.

Do I know what this is? Vaugely. But its shore delicious.

Red lanterns glowing at night.

The next day we went to Tianamen Square.

Heres part of the statue that flanks Mao's mausoleum.

Is that an AK-47?



Haro, Chairman. They keep his embalmed body in a refrigerated display in the Square and raise it up every day so people can go and look at it. Freaky.

Oh yeah, and theres these super stiff guard guys everywhere.

And a million tourists. mostly Chinese.

The complete Communist propaganda machine.

Lots of lights, loudspeaker, music speakers, and multiple surveillance cameras.

Later on we, plus every tourist and thier cousin (no siblings here) went to the Forbidden City.

It was massive.

And epic.

These are the doors to our apartment.

Even the less fancy buildings have cool embossed endcaps like this on the roof.

Little birds. Ive seen a number of these around.

RAWR!

In the old days, they cook you in this if youre bad.

(Its actually for fire fighting)

"May we remind you: Please be self-restraint and be a good tourist to mold a well-mannered imagination."

Im sorry. What?

Just outside the Forbidden City, taking glamour shots. not of her feet.

The Temple of Heaven. Emperors went there to pray for a good harvest.

Didnt make it to the Palace of Abstenince, which sounds like no fun anyway.

A young Chinese guy proposed to his girlfriend near here. It was rather adorable.

Day three we went out to Mutianyu to the Great Wall.

If you build it, they will come.

If they come, you can sell them things.

This was the best hat ever.

Ever.

You can take a cable car if you want, but I decided to hike up to the wall.

There were lots and lots and lots of steps.

Really really old steps.

But its flat on top, right?

LIES.

HA! Triumphant!

It sure is majestic.

Once I edit out these tourists in Photoshop, it will be perfect.

(I deliberately left out all the pictures with hordes of people in them)

What? How did that get there?

The last day we went first to the Buisness District to check out some buildings.

Oh, haro Rem.

Except I cant call him Rem unless I know him personally.

Which I dont.

You can also see the burned out TVCC building next to it. And the top of the giant honking wall they put up all around the city block so you cant get near it to take good pictures. Thanks alot, Beijing. Expect more griping later.

Yep. Sure is burned.

Entrance to the Lama Temple.

Its the oldest Tibetan Buddhist temple in Beijing..or something.

But its rather pretty anyway.

You thought the sky in Beijing was always grey, didnt you?

So did I.

I still dont really believe this color.



These guys were sprucing up the paint on the gate.

Cue family photo.

Long silken prayer flags.

I didnt get a picture of the GIANT (18m tall!) sandalwood Buddah.

It was pretty gosh-durned big.

Beijing was a great time- and we didnt even make it to some of the other famous stuff.
We did some other things that arent documented here- including having an amazing dinner at a place where they dress up in Ming dynasty outfits. Sounds cheesy but it was actually pretty amazing. Dad is learning Chinese at a ferocious pace, mom and I are still on "how much is this?"

We have some down time for a bit and next weekend we go to Xi'an, where the terracotta warriors are. (and the so-called "most dangerous hike in the world", Hua Shan, which I fully intend to frighten the living daylights out of my mother on)

Architecture post soon.