Sichuan and Tibet

I am reading a Tibet guidebook tonight, the landscapes there are so fascinating, and the temples are just awesome. I always envy people who have been there, but not anymore-- I'll be there in a few days!

Bought the air ticket to Chengdu today (2.5 hours by plane, 43hours by train), I'll leave Hangzhou tomorrow, and I'll do it alone. Since I've got some unpleasant experience of traveling with groups, I'll leave them this time. And still couldn't find any travel partner, some say they're busy, some say these areas are too remote and dangerous, and some say the trip costs too much... I don't have much money either; I'll take all I have, probably still not enough, but I think I could save some money by staying in cheap hotels, eating street food as main meals or something... And I'm fine with traveling alone too. At least I'm totally free, which might be the best way to experience the real feeling of travel.

As for travel plan, I'lll go to Sichuan province first, visiting Chengdu, JiuZhaiGou, Huanglong Scenic Area , Emei Mountain and Giant Buddha of Leshan . And then move to Tibet area. Not sure how long the trip takes, more than two weeks I guess. If I still have some money left after finishing Sichuan and Tibet trip, I�ll go to more places. If not, I�ll go home by train. Never been on a train for more than 3 hours, it'd be interesting to be sitting in one seat for two days and two nights.

I probably couldn't update my blog for a while, I'm sure I�ll miss it a lot. But I think I can bring lots of pictures when getting back, and write about my travel stories.

See you in two weeks:)

Go to west

Anyone might be interested in traveling to western china?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about going to some western regions like Sichuan, Yunnan, Xizang... Never been there before, these places seem fascinating, and they're so different form where I live, I'm eager to see something new.

Been on summer vacation for about three weeks. What I've been up to? Reading, surfing the web, watching DVDs, visiting some towns nearby...and lots of sleep. Life is comfortable, but time passes so quickly; it's probably my last summer vacation as a student, I really wanna do something different.

I hope my journey could get started by the end of the month. I'm thinking about visiting there alone (more adventurous), joining a travel group (less freedom but safer), or finding some travel partners to go together (best choice).

I haven't found anyone yet, if you happen to be interested in these areas, please let me know.

A map of China

39.1

Yesterday, the temperature got to 39.1C (102F) in Hangzhou, that was hot. The weather has been like that for a while. I like summer, and I can stand hot weather pretty well, but such heat is definitely killing my motivation to go out.

I stay home a lot lately. Hiding in the air-conditioned room, I'm not aware of the hot weather outside that much. My room isn't big. Usually, I keep the door and the windows open. And it's always noisy outside. I hear my mom and grandparents watching TV in the next room, I hear cicadas making endless sounds, I hear the cars moving and the horns being blown (though it's forbidden), I hear some old people chatting loudly downstair...Background sound is various. I guess I've already gotten used these noises; mostly, I forget their existence.

When the temperature is over 30, I turn on my air-conditioner. The windows and the door are closed. Apart from the room is getting cooler, the surrounding is much quieter--almost as quiet as 2 in the morning. Then the world turns out to be a little bit weird to me. I'm not used to staying in such a quiet room during the day. When the world gets that quiet, it's time to sleep. Because of the air-conditioner, I sleep a lot in my cozy room. 11PM-11AM, 1PM-3PM, 7PM-8PM. That's my sleeping schedule. I'm living like a pig, and there's no ounce of guilt about wasting too much time on sleep.

The similarity between reading books and watching movies is we don't need to get the brain working too much--perfect for the summer. That's why I spend most of my time on reading and watching DVDs these days. Movies-- last night, I watched a movie called Cube: Six total strangers awaken one day to find themselves inside a giant cube with thousands of possible rooms. They started trying to get out of the cube as a team, but at last five of them were killed by each other. I like this movie, it's a smart one. The whole movie is low-budget: shot in one room, only 6 actors, and finished in 20 days. Interested in these small budget and indenpent films a lot.

Though watching movies almost every day, it's been a while since the last time I saw an interesting movie. I was always wondering if the more movies we watch, the pickier we become. Seems to me, that is true. I used to like movies a lot, though I still do, it's not that easy to come across a movie I really like. I guess partly because I've already watched many movies I like, and partly because I'm getting tired of watching some stereotyped stories. When asked do you like watching movie, I won't say yes immediately anymore. What I come to realize is, most movies bore me, but I really like the movies I like. Catching an interesting movie is a happy thing, and finding a friend who has similar movie taste with me is nice.

Movies I like.

Today is not that hot. Fianlly, I went out this afternoon. Bought a bunch of new DVDs, and-- a pair of new glasses. The old one isn't strong enough, the new one(not sure what the measurements are outside China): left eye 700, right eye 600. Without glasses, I'm blind.



Mortar and Pestle



Saw this picture from an art book.
It's a close-up view of the artist's tongue(the pestle) being thrust into her hunsband's open eye(the mortar). The name of that artist is Janine Antoni. Know nothing about her, but I really like this picture. Brilliant.

leylop pictures
A few months ago, I was completely anonymous on the web-- leylop is a Chinese, leylop writes in English, and that's all. Over time, I've been talking more and more about myself, also telling my classmates and some friends about this site; over time, I'm not anonymous anymore.

What I finally realize is-- being anonymous is cool. When nobody knows you, it's easier to rant about anything. I won't care if I should publish this piece or not no matter how silly or badly written it is. And I won't hurt anyone's feelings no matter how offensive I sound, Now, considering the possibility that people in the stories might be reading this blog too, I have to think twice before I write.

leylop@hotmail.com is my email address. Last year, I hardly ever got any spam. But now, more than 30 junk emails come to that mail box every day, and the number is growing fast. Annoying, but at least it's a sign that I participate in the Interent more. Kinda curious how far that number will go, 40?50?...or 100? Any record there?

Another interesting thing is though many people read my blog for a while, some still might think I'm male. "leylop" is related to "his", "he", and "him". All my fault. It's hard to tell I'm male or female from the name. And I don't sound like a girl sometimes. Like being anonymous, this little mistake is cool. I don't mind it at all.

Finally, I set up a new page of my own pictures. Some of them were scanned from old photos, the rest were taken recently. I haven't shown any pictures of myself yet, so for most of you who haven't met me before, here's what I look like :)

2008 Beijing Olympic Games

Today is the second anniversary of Beijing's successful bid for the 2008 Olympics Games. There're many celebrations in Beijing. The TV news is showing how happy Beijing people are, and how proud the whole Chinese nation is. Sick and tired of such news, frankly, I don't give a damn about it-- Beijing Olympics is way too overrated.

Not a big fan of sports, I don't think the Olympics are that important in the first place. It's cool that a sport event can gather a bunch of people from all over the world together. But after all they're just games. For people like me who are not into sports that much, or for people living in poverty who don't even have enough food, or for people who are busy with other more important things, the Olympics games are nothing.

So I don't see why so many people consider 2008 Beijing Olympic Games such a big deal. True besides the Olympic itself, there're many other benefits for China like more business opportunities will be created. But sports are sports, and business is business, what I'm sick of is they connect the Olympics with politics too much. "As China is getting stronger, the world is paying more attention to China!" "Beijing successfully bid for such an important event, we should be proud of our country! " "Let's study hard and work hard for 2008 Beijing Olympic!"... Ugh, can't stand such propaganda. Right, Beijing is the capital of China, but I don't think it stands for the whole country. If I were a Beijing ren, I'd probably be happy that my city will hold a big sports event. But now I just can't get that happy and excited. And I think the government is not supposed to get involved with the Olympics that much. Also sports don't have much to do with patriotism-- just because we're indifferent to the Olympic, doesn't mean we're not patriotic. I hate to hear some athletes saying something like" I won the medal for the country, I didn't give up when thinking about China..." A load of crap. Why not just pure sport-- "I deserved to win because I've been working very hard, I didn't give up because I've got a strong will." I believe sport spirit is far more supportive than patriotism.

Apparently, Beijing is working hard on preparing for 2008 Beijing Olympic, like building new Infrastructure, controlling the pollutions… Check out this news-- Beijing to clean sky for 2008 Olympic Games
. It sounds like they're proud of their achievement. Stupid. Sad to see they only start to care about the environment when they need it. They don't care about the city, they don't care about people, they only care about the Olympics -- as a clean sky is something they could show off: see, how clean China is! So I guess if there were no Olympic games, they wouldn't care about the environment at all, and Beijing would keep dirty.

Back to that two-year anniversary, what's the point of wasting so much money on commemorating this day every year? What's the point of organizing so many boring celebrations? There’s a lot of better way to spend money and energy. China is facing the flood threat, that's what we should really care about now.

Goodbye the room with a view

Lying on the bed, I still couldn't fall asleep. I started missing my own room, my bed and my computer.

Away from home, I was in a small hostel in Ningbo. The moment I stepped into my room, I saw a cockroach creeping on the bed. "Oh, dirty!" I couldn't help shouting these words out. The owner of that hostel, a thirty something woman, was standing beside me, but she seemed totally indifferent to what she saw, and tried to kill the cockroach with the pillow I was gonna use. She failed--the cockroach disappeared quickly, finding a nice place to hide below the bed. The owner shrugged her shoulders as if to say that there was nothing else she could do about it.

"Can I change to another room?" I asked her.
"This is the best room of our hostel, the room with a view! The cockroach is nothing, every room is the same." She explained.
"But it's still alive, maybe it will come out when I fall asleep, trying to get into my mouth or nose or something. That'd be disgusting."
"It's nothing." She repeated, "since you're out, just get used to everything."
"But..." I was trying to argue, I believed the fact that other rooms wouldn't get necessarily better though, and they didn't have windows, that'd be like cells. I wanted a room with a window, so I decided to stay.

After the owner left, I checked my room carefully. It was a small room, besides a bed, a chair, and a TV, there was not much room left. And the window, which the owner considered a big deal, was full of dust; the view was terrible--a dirty street, some stores, and several pedestrians were what I saw. No air-conditioner of course, the room was hot. There was a ceiling fan though. I turned it on, but it appeared to me that the fan might fall off all of a sudden, so I'd rather not use it.

I was a little bit disappointed, but not that much. After all, the cost was cheap, only 40RMB($5) a night. And I got a bed-- that was all I'd expected. When traveling outside, I didn't care about where to live and what to eat, apart from a bed to stay and enough food to fill me up, I didn't ask for more. I wanted to save more money for visiting more places.

So this time, I was happy enough to find such a cheap place to stay. I didn't really know where it was, Ningbo was the city I was totally unfamiliar with. I was walking and walking all day, as the evening wore on, I thought it was the time to take a rest. I asked some random guy where I could find a cheap place to stay, he commended me this one, so here I was.

I was not in the mood for watching TV, too much TV at home. I wanted to take a shower, after one day walking, I was exhausted. But a nice shower was impossible, I didn't even have a bathroom. Oh yeah, bathroom, I wanted to go to the bathroom. The owner told me there was one on this floor. So I went there---two holes, no doors, and shared by both men and women, that was the only bathroom they got.

Kinda shocked by this bathroom, I went back to my room. It was too early to go to bed, and I couldn't come up with anything else to do in this room. I was thinking about finding a clean place to get something to drink and get my dirty face washed. What first came to my mind was a McDonald's nearby. Being in a new and strange city, American fast food chains like McDonald's, KFC... were what I was familiar with most. They were everywhere, and they seemed friendly. Ironical.

I passed a couple of hours in McDonald's. When getting back, it was almost twelve, good, time to sleep. I was just about taking off my pants, that cockroach thing popped into my mind. Right, it's still alive, I'm in danger. And I checked the pillow and the sheet, they looked damn dirty, almost stunk. There must had been lots of people lying on this bed before me, and I didn't think they washed the sheet often, maybe once or twice a month. It was summer already, the temperature was around 35C, but they still gave me thick sheet used in winter. But?not a big problem, at least I've got a bed, and it's so cheap, I was trying to persuade myself to sleep on that bed. I turned off the light, and finally lied down. When at home, I could fall asleep in three minutes. But I didn't get such luck here. My room was the first room on that floor, it was still noisy outside. I could hear new people coming, getting registered, even bargaining. I felt a little bit insecure. It was not safe indeed. I didn't have the key of the room. The owner controlled the key, if I wanted to go outside or go to the bathroom, I had to close the door, and ask the owner to open the door for me when getting back. I saw her almost open my door for two migrant workers living in next door. Anyone could probably break in in any minute. The more I thought in that way, the more dangerous I felt. So I put all my money, cards, camera and mp3 player in my pants pockets. Sure I didn't feel comfortable with so much stuff, but I felt safer. I turned on the TV, watching some boring TV programs might help me to get to sleep. But it didn't help at all. I started feeling hot. No fan, no shower, and sleeping with a bunch of stuff, no wonder. I thought about getting up, reading some books and doing some writing. But my eyes were too tired, and I'd already taken off my contacts, I was too lazy to find my glasses in my bag. Keep sleeping, I could fall asleep soon, I told myself.

I closed my eyes again. Lying on the bed, I still couldn't fall asleep. I started missing my room, my bed and my computer. Traveling was cool, and I'd already gotten used to traveling alone. I enjoyed the freedom of being alone. But I hated the night, I wished I could stay up a night, and there were lots of places I could visit besides the places like bars, night clubs where I didn't like that much.

I checked my watch from time to time, almost every 15 minutes, but it seemed to me that longer time had passed in between. 11pm, 12pm, 1am, 2am...it was the first time I deeply experienced the frustration of having difficulty in falling asleep. I didn't care about if I could get a good night sleep actually, but I wanted the night to pass quickly. The beauty of sleep was when falling asleep, I knew nothing, and when I opened my eyes again, it was in the morning-- several hours passed in no time. Now, in this hot, dirty, and insecure room, I wished the time could fly.

Three in the morning, I was still awake, and I was not alone: there were several guys chatting, laughing, and screaming right under my window. I didn't know where they came from, and I didn't understand what the hell they were talking about. They seemed either extremely happy or extremely sad, which I couldn't figure it out. I though about talking back, but I knew it might cause me in trouble, so I cut out that idea. Dirty, hot, insecure, and noisy. Boy, I was in hell.

The next time I checked my watch was 5:30 in the morning. I thought I got a little bit sleep after four. Good, the morning finally came. Looking out of the window, it seemed like a beautiful day. I couldn't wait to pack my stuff and get out of the hostel. No kidding, it was the worst night I had in my whole life, but anyways, I was fine, and it'd be an unforgettable experience. Goodbye the room with a view, I don't wanna see you anymore.


Ningbo Pictures
Ningbo pictures are here. It's a nice city, I think it's more modern than Hangzhou. Most areas seem brand new, especially buildings. And it's pretty clean.

Wuzhen


I visited Wuzhen yesterday. Wuzhen is another old Chinese town, it looks perfect in photos and on TV, so I wanted to go there to take some pictures.

It took me 1.5 hours by bus to get there. Disappointedly, Wuzhen didn't look that good in reality, far from it. What makes Wuzhen famous is a long street full of old houses, and that's it. The tourism ads only show us this single street, as if the whole town would look like the same. Actually that street is just one tiny corner of the town. Their website lies, the TV shows lie, and the pictures lie--Wuzhen isn't an ancient looking town at all, it's just a regular town like many other towns in China. Photographers appears to pick the best parts of the locations; even me, unintentionally, I've done the same thing. You can take a look at my pictures and know more about Wuzhen.

It costs me 60RMB to visit Wuzhen, obviously, Wuzhen doesn't deserve to charge visitors so much money (it takes me less money to visit the Forbidden City! ). The buildings there are nothing special, even kinda ugly to me. There's no great architecture or awesome landscape in Wuzhen, what they've got are some ordinary houses built a couple of hundred years ago. But does old mean everything? No way! Just because they're old doesn't mean they are good. Old with a good quality means a lot, simply being old doesn't mean that much. There were lots of houses like these in the past, I mean not very long ago, like 10 years ago, there were still many (much better looking) old houses left in China. But at that time, people just wanted to get rid of the old things which seemed to stand for the undevelopment and poorness, so most old houses were pulled down. Today, old houses are rare, and their values are different -- they become precious all of a sudden.

Past couple of years, several towns like Wuzhen have become famous because of the old houses they've kept. Tons of tourists rush into these towns, wanting to take a look at these ancient style houses. Local people finally realize that keeping the old stuff is beneficial. I don't think they regard protecting the ancient culture as the first thing, but developing the tourist business to make lots of money is what they really want. They are eager to be listed in the world heritage sites, then more people from all over the world would come, and more money could be made. Might sound too cynical, but I do think that's the way it is.

Back to Wuzhen, I think it's facing many problems. Wuzhen used to be an unknown town, but now lots of people come to visit the town every day. Local people's lives are interrupted, and the environment is polluted, do these people feel comfortable to live in front of the tourists and cameras? Looking inside of the houses, every room seemed so dark, and the housing facilities were bad. Most Young people have moved out, only the olds are left. How about the future of the town? After the old people are gone, who will still be willing to live in such houses? If nobody lives in, the town would look dead, how do they deal with such situation? Though the street looks all right, now that the street is the only thing they have, why not do it better? Like in this picture, that motorcycle sucks, why not put it inside? Deveopling tourist business is perfect understandable, but that's not supposed to be their ultimate goal. If the government could support more, they'd probably put less heart on how to make more money.

Anyway, though I didn't like Wuzhen that much, I enjoyed my day a lot. After visiting that street, I walked around the town and had lots of fun. I like the feeling of being alone without knowing anybody passing by. It's great to travel soemwhere and take back some pictures (I like the pictures). And I'm kinda interested in these old towns, not only because of the old stuff, but the way they manage the town. I'll visit more towns this summer.


Pictures:

Wuzhen : the town I visited this time
Hongcun village: another ancient village that I like much better
TangXi: the town I used to live