Holy Rice Cakes Batman!...

I do most of my grocery shopping (particularly for hard to carry home items like water and drinks) from a website called Beijing Home Delivery. It is a wonderful service run by a group of English speaking Chinese men. The prices are reasonable and you get all five of the city's English expat magazines delivered with your order. Most of their items are sold in Sam's Club type quantities which saves you some money on not having to have delivery so often; they do charge a small delivery fee, but because a large quantity of groceries is hard to get home on the subway, you end up spending that money on a taxi anyway.

My latest order arrived this morning. In addition to the usual Cokes and bottled water, I ordered a bag of rice, the smallest one they had, and since I don't know the metric system, here is what I ended up with:

I think I will have enough rice until I leave China mid June! Most Chinese families use lots of rice per week, so these large quantity bags are common. For singles and other families that use less, you can buy rice "loose" in the produce section of the stores by scooping how much you need into a bag. I thought based on price and the fact that it was the "small" size, I was ordering about a pound of rice. I guess I need to learn the metric system; this is bigger than most bags of dog food I have bought before!

Xian Tim...

On Sunday night, I headed out late on an overnight train from Beijing to Xian. What follows is a full report on the experience.

Part 1- I'm on a train, don't you ever forget!

Beijing West Railway Station

Arriving at Beijing West Railway Station can be a bit intimidating due to its size. It is the largest of three stations in Beijing and is currently the largest in all of Asia. China has an extensive railway network linking Beijing with any city in the country and even with Russia, most destinations are just an overnight ride. Once inside, its not that difficult, you run your luggage through a scanner and then find your track by matching your train number with a track number. Its a good thing numbers are written the same in English as they are in Chinese though, because everything else is Chinese!

After locating my train's track, I had some time to kill so went off in search of some food for dinner. There were several Chinese restaurants, a hamburger stand, and even a Peking duck restaurant as well as the usual McDonalds and KFC. I settled on a Chinese cafeteria style restaurant and ordered some jiaozi- boiled dumplings. They were good, nothing special, but good.

My train started boarding in an hour after dinner so I made my way to the lounge area and killed the time on my Nintendo DS. Soon after boarding, I made my way quickly to my bunk in the hard sleeper cars. Hard sleeper is the economy sleeper class. You are in an open, clean, compartment (no door) with 5 other travelers. There are 6 bunks in the compartment. An upgrade to this would be the soft sleeper, but the only differences are a door and 4 beds instead of 6. Beyond that there is deluxe soft sleeper (2 more comfortable beds and private Western style toilet) but if you can afford deluxe soft sleeper you might as well book a flight. Hard sleeper is the recommended way to go, its the way the locals and adventurous foreigners do it. Even though they say the hard does not refer to the comfort level of the beds, I found that to be an adequate description! All in all it wasn't bad, lights went out shortly after ten and I slept decently. My only problem was one of my bunkmates who insisted on watching movies on his laptop until well after midnight without headphones! Hey buddy you aren't the only one on this train. The Chinese men in my compartment handled this quite well though eventually getting him to turn the volume down to a more acceptable level.

Crowded Hard Sleeper Car

My Bunk

Part 2- Arrival In Xian
Xian is an ancient city surrounded by a mostly reconstructed city wall. It is in Shanxi province. The city is so beautiful, smaller than Beiijng. I kept trying to figure out why it was so beautiful and finally later in the day it hit me: trees, there are trees everywhere! Its been so long since I've seen so many trees!

The Beauty Of Xian, Mountains Surrounding The Terra Cotta Army Museum

After navigating myself out of the Xian train station and locating my hired guide, Penny from China Travel Service, we set off to the first stop of the day, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. That is the tower you see in the following picture. It is at the center of an Ancient Buddhist Temple built as a storehouse of Buddhist scriptures that were brought from India. Throughout the tour Penny told me many interesting stories about the various rooms in the temple even explaining the meaning behind the murals in the temple rooms, things I wouldn't have gotten on my own.

Big Wild Goose Pagoda

Later I stopped for a picture with Happy Buddha. My guide told me that while I was getting my picture made that a person said "Look at that foreigner, his belly looks like Happy Buddha!" I always knew I had the body of a god!

Come On Get Happy!

Part 3- The Terra Cotta Army
Next, it was on to my real reason for the trip, the Terra Cotta Army. This is one of those things you have to do in China. The army is located about an hour's drive from Xian. On the way we stopped at a factory where they make souveneir warriors and I got the following photo:

At The Factory

In the factory, I got to watch the process of making a souveneir warrior. They make them in all sizes from desktop size up to life size. After the short tour, I was escorted to the obligatory gift shop. The sellers were pushy but not too much. Having seen this before on previous tours I didn't waste much time here because I knew I couldn't afford most of it and then had no way of getting most of it home. (Who actually buys life size lions carved out of jade and then pays thousands of dollars to have them shipped to the U.S.?) I picked up a couple of small warriors and was on my way. My tour guide was quite surprised at how quick I was. Most tours spend about an hour or more on these shopping excursions. The tour directors make a comission off of the sales, although I am sure she didn't get much from my paltry purchase!

Next, the warriors. The Terra Cotta Army was contructed under orders of the first emperor of China's Qing dynasty, the same man responsible for the Great Wall. He desired to continue his rule in the afterlife. In 1979, some farmers were digging a well and started digging up arms, legs, and heads. They sent them off to the government who found out they had discovered the tomb of this emperor! Today one of the farmers sits in the gift shop (they say it's him) and signs autographs. After a short film with some of the worst acting and props I have seen (I hope the real Qing army didn't wear plastic helmets!) I was taken through each of the excavated pits. It is a work in progress, many of the soldiers are still in pieces and are being restored by archaeologists. Here is a picture of the largest pit, sorry it's in black and white, my new camera allows you to change from color to black and white and sometimes just takes pictures in whatever color it feels like.

Pit Of Warrior Ruins; Can You See The Horse's Rear End?

After several hours at the warrior museum, I was hungry so my guide took me to a restaurant where I had a delicious dish of breaded deep fried chicken cooked with cashews, peanuts, and deep fried strips of potato. I have never seen this dish in Beijing! I also got to watch noodles being made and sample a local delicacy, Pomegrante wine. It was very strong and I could barely handle the communion cup sized sample!

Delicious Lunch

Part 4- Back To Beijing
Later, after the tour, I wondered around downtown Xian on my own for awhile and then headed to the train station. I got ripped off by a rickshaw driver but if you don't get ripped off at least once in China, you haven't really experienced the country. While hailing a cab, the rickshaw driver pulled up and offered to take me to the train station. "Duo shao qian?" I said. (How much money?) He showed me a ten and a twenty rmb bill. Okay, 30 rmb is reasonable plus I haven't ridden on a rickshaw yet. (I don't have a wife to make angry life Clifton did!) It was a cool ride, he took me through a lot of back streets and I got to see how the locals live in Xian. After arrival at the train station 20 minutes later, I handed him my 100 rmb note and he handed me my change all rolled up. I didn't think to count it but upon arrival at the train station I realized he had given me the 10 and 20 rmb note he had shown me. The 30 rmb cab ride cost me 70 rmb! Oh well, he probably needs the money plus it is all part of the China experience! (Actually I am sure he gets rich pulling this scam on foreigners all the time.)

The Xian train station is a nightmare: crowded, dirty, and hot. I had a couple of hours to kill so I played more DS, watched The Office on my Ipod, and listened to MxPx for awhile. Once back on the train, I was again in hard sleeper this time with a very friendly Chinese couple and 2 others. I headed to the diner car for dinner and had a simple stir fry of pepper, onions, and beef with green tea on the side. It was a decent meal and the man in charge of the diner who seemed to think he was running a place of the caliber of Emeril or Gordon Ramsey gave me a good laugh. Next, it was Benadryl and passing out in my bunk. I arrived back in Beijing early, around 6:30 am exhausted but glad to have added another unique experience to my year in China.

Diner Car

Back To Beijing

An Easter Gift...

In the picture above, you are looking at an Easter Egg. This was a gift from one of my students and frequent blog reader, Tina. Tina had noticed how on my blog last week I mentioned that I really missed the Easter Eggs this year. Tina got this egg at church last Sunday at Haidian Christian. The Sunday School children at this church made these for the congregation. They are hollowed out egg shells that have been hand painted. Pictured on the egg is a cross as well as the Chinese symbols for peace, appropriate to me as I end each class by saying to the students: "See ya when I see ya! Peace!" (something I picked up at Camp Stewart a few years back, it is how we ended activities there)

On the surface, an egg may not seem like much, but to me it represents what I love most about China and will miss most: the thoughfulness and kindness of the locals. This student remembered that I mentioned missing Easter Eggs and also made sure to personalize it to my personality. That took a lot of thought to do. I am continually impressed by this type of thoughtfulness on the part of my students here, none of my American students ever were even close to being this kind.

Tonight, I head out by train to Xian to visit the famous Terra Cotta Warriors, expect lots of pics when I return on Tuesday.

Easter Sunday...

Unlike Christmas, Easter is a western holiday that has not yet been commercialized in China. That was actually kind of refreshing as it allowed me to focus solely on the religious significance of the day rather than being bomarded by images of clucking rabbits on tv selling chocolate eggs and grown men in bunny suits giving out cheap candy to children. It also led to some interesting conversations with Chinese friends who had never heard of Easter before. I did miss the colored eggs though, well maybe next year.

This morning I attended the Easter service and celebration at Congregation of the Good Shepherd. The service was a beautiful combination of music, liturgy, scripture, preaching, and communion. Pastor Dan preached an inspired sermon on the importance and benefits of sharing our faith in Christ. The worship room was filled to standing room only (people that my friend Bro. Brian Rainey would call "Easter Lilies" as they attend only on Easter). The choir was magnificent proclaiming the message of Easter through song.

After the service, the children had an egg hunt in a nearby park and the adults had coffee/tea and chatted. I was able to meet several new people as well as get caught up on EF happenings with fellow EF teacher Sue from EF Dongzhimen Center.

Following the coffee time, we went back inside for an elaborate Easter luncheon buffet catered by the Capital Club. The Capital Club is an organization of foreign businessmen. One part of our agreement with them is that they provide our meeting space in their function hall but if we need any food, we have to use their catering service. While it is expensive, I felt the meal was well worth the 180 rmb per person (about 30 bucks, although if you can't afford the full price wealthier members of the congregation do help make up the difference for those who can't pay). The meal featured a Chinese barbecue station with duck, chicken, and pork; a carving station with ham and prime rib; a salad buffet; lamb and chicken; various vegetables; and an elaborate dessert station with make your own waffles, cakes, and ice cream! I felt like I was at the Bellagio buffet! It was definitely of the quality you would receive in a five star hotel.

Here is a video compilation of the service as well as some pictures:



The Altar Ready For Easter


Dessert Plate With Chocolate Rabbit

The Office Beijing...

What do you do when you are bored at work, make your own television shows! Armed with a new digital camera, I wanted to try out its video capabilities. Hope you enjoy the result.

Before you watch my video watch this clip from The Office to get some context. Don't forget to come back when finished and watch my video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AC1oj_SWJU

Beijing World Park Preview...

Yesterday I went to Beijing World Park, a theme park where you can tour the entire world in an afternoon. Since one hour photo takes a week in China (don't ask) and I am reduced to using a film camera after leaving mine in a cab, I won't write an article until next week. Here is a souveneir photo I had taken:

Dang taxis, I said THE LUXOR not LUXOR. This doesn't look like the Nevada desert.