Good News, Bad News

The Spring Festival is upon us! For those of you who aren't familiar with Chinese New Year, it is a lot like the hype surrounding the holidays in the US. There is a lot more buying, smiling, and traveling. The universities position their semester breaks around the New Year (or Spring Festival), so we are on break until the first week of March! This means that we get to travel all around China, and see some new stuff. Unfortunately, this means that there won't be any new blogs for all of you to read until we get back.

Jimbo is coming to meet us in Xi'an, but we've already had many adjustments to our travel plan. As I mentioned earlier, traveling is BIG around the New Year. In fact, I read that it's the single largest migration of people in the world every year. That's because the Spring Festival is the only time when many Chinese travel home to see their families. The Spring Festival is all about being with families and remembering the deceased. They eat a lot of dumplings, and watch TV. Each year, CCTV (think Chinese BBC), broadcasts a variety show with all the hottest and favorite Chinese celebs. So, literally, a billion-plus people tune in and watch CCTV on New Year's Eve. It has got to be the most watched program every year. Oh, I was writing about travel.

The most affordable way to travel in China is train. However, China doesn't allow train tickets to be bought more than four days in advance (10 days around New Year). You can only imagine the chaos this creates. Chinese people have trouble making an orderly line (or "queuing up" for our British readers) as it is, so when you pack in holiday demand, it gets pretty ugly - elbows necessary. Originally, we were planning on traveling first to see the Buddhist Caves in Luoyang, but there is only one train from our train station heading in that direction; so despite having signed up for tickets with a travel agency 3 weeks in advance (which doesn't really mean anything apparently), we didn't get the tickets. It went to the 500,000 other people that wanted to go to that one destination on that one day. Thankfully, it's pretty close to us, so we can visit later in the year.

Here's our travel itinerary for those of you so inclined:

Jan 24th: Fly to Xi'an. Highlight - Terracotta Army
Jan 30th: Train or Flight to Chengdu, Bus to Leshan. Highlight - Giant Buddha
Feb. 3rd: Bus back to Chengdu. Highlight - Darbie holding a baby Giant Panda
Feb. 7th: Fly to Lhasa. Highlight - Potala Palace, being on the "ceiling of the world"
Feb. 11th: Fly to Hong Kong. Highlight - Doing a whole lot before Jimbo leaves on the 14th.
Feb. 14th: Fly to ?? Possible options - Sanya (China's Hawaii), Harbin (China's Siberia), or Nanjing (China's old "South(nan) Capitol(jing)." Can you figure out what Beijing means? Good!).
Last week of Feb: Return to cold, windy, McDonalds-less Huangdao.

We shall return with many a story to tell.

DB&KM

PS: We will be checking our email when possible, so feel free to write!