Desert Oasis

For out last trip, we decided to go someplace vastly different than anywhere else we'd been in China - Dunhuang. Dunhuang is in the far west of China in Gansu Province. It is a desert oasis which was one of the first stops on the Silk Route in China. Thus, there is a lot of history in this tiny town. The air is dry, but fortunately, the temperature didn't get high enough to keep us from doing what we wanted. We arrived early in the morning on the first day, and because it was overcast, we decided to climb MingSha Shan (Echoing Sand Mountain). It isn't a mountain at all though really, but a huge sand dune. If you look in the picture above, in the background are the dunes, and now you see why they call it a mountain. Climbing a sand mountain is not easy, and I would not recommend it unless you had a good view at the top. Fortunately, that's just what we had! The picture below shows just how high we had to climb. The road at the top of the picture is the same from the picture above. Once we reached the top of the dune, we had to sit and rest for a while. Mostly, though, we had to empty out our shoes.From the top of MingSha Shan, Crescent Lake looks like a sliver of water in the huge desert. You can see the "lake" in the picture below. Those little dots are people. At one time, the lake was bigger and the lake was a popular oasis for brave travelers through the Gobi Desert.
Thankfully, we didn't have to climb all the way down thanks to sand-tubing! Racing down the steep dunes is quite an experience. Sand stings your skin as you zoom down, and it's hard not to end up with a mouth full of sand. The next day we visited the famous Mogao Caves. The caves are important Buddhist relics. The discovery of several ancient texts in the caves was one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. Due to the natural deterioration that occurs from sand, heat, and wind in Dunhuang, each cave is locked. However, visitors can join tours and visit a few caves.
Because of the need to preserve these caves, photography is not allowed. The picture above is houses the largest cave that contains an extremely large Buddha. If you squint at the picture below, you can see Darbie and I on the top row. Each doorway is an entrance to a different cave. The caves have vastly different murals that depict Buddhist art from several different centuries. Currently, many scholars are working at electronically capturing each cave so that they can be accessed over the internet. Unfortunately, this also means that the caves could be shut forever. After visiting the caves, we craved more adventure so we signed up for an overnight camel ride through the desert. We departed from a tiny local cafe to the house of our guide. It was interesting being inside his house. It was very bare, but they still managed to have it feel like a home. Little kids were running around helping their father round up the camels. We were called outside and met our companions.
Make no mistake about it, camels are not pretty. We loaded up and began our trek through the desert.
Darbie is the second from the right, and Jimbo and Kendall are first and second from the left. We rode for about two hours before reaching our campsite for the night. We decided to climb the dunes around us to see the sunset, but once we reached the top we saw a frightening sight. SANDSTORM!! It slowly moved its way toward us and before we knew it, we were engulfed in strong winds and sand. It finally settled down, and we were able to make our way back to the campsite for the night. Our tour guide had set up our very small tents, and was beginning our dinner of instant noodles. The moon rose from behind the dunes, and the stars have never been so bright. The tour guide built us a fire and sang us songs as he offered us baijiu. Sleeping was not easy (mostly due to Jimbo's snoring), but the morning finally came. We got to watch a beautiful sunrise as we ate our breakfast. The second day turned out to be a little clearer and we got some beautiful shots of the dunes. Darbie also shot the video below. Riding a camel is not always comfortable on the rear, and you can get the drift from the bounciness of the video.

After the camel ride, we were sore and dirty. So we went back to our awesome hotel, and relaxed. The picture below is taken from the rooftop bar. You can see the unique architecture and how close it was to the dunes.

It was finally time to leave Dunhuang, but not China quite yet. We stopped in Beijing for a couple of days and were able to see the completed Olympic preparations. Above, Darbie and Jimbo stand in front of the famous Watercube. The Olympic area was abuzz with excitement and activity as you can tell from the following video.


We were also able to visit a very unique area of Beijing. After getting lost for a while, we found an artsy neighborhood. The art was very modern, and a stark contrast from the Communist China of old. A graffiti wall was the entrance to the campus.
There was a lot of interesting art, some of it very critical of the government. It was refreshing to see that, indeed, there is personal expression in China after all. Marilyn Monroe even made an appearance (twice).

Above, is from a brilliant exhibit of replica terracotta warriors with colorful designs. As you can see, Marilyn Monroe is painted here.

After a brief visit in Beijing, we loaded the plane and left China. I don't think we'll ever forget many of the things we saw and experienced here. There is no doubt that we came away from this trip changed people, for the better. China will always have a soft spot in our heart because of it.

Thanks for reading,

DB & KM

Last Days in Huangdao

Well, we are finishing our last day in Huangdao, China at the University of Science and Technology. Jimbo arrived two days ago from a 4 day bike ride along the eastern Chinese coast. Since then we have been busy introducing him to students and other teachers, climbing a mountain at the south end of our campus, introducing him to our town with shopping and local restaurants, eating lots of Chinese food, and he even got a trip to the local police station unaccompanied by either of us!

Below, Jimbo is tesing his free climbing skills on a local mountain a short walk from our school.

We reached the top! In the distance you can see our school campus.
The Torch Relay is arriving in Qingdao on Monday. They are very excited about it with lots advertising. Even you can be a torch bearer in the local bank!
When dad arrived on campus, he was outfitted in his full bike riding regalia. As soon as he arrived, I got a phone call from one of my students wanting to take pictures together. So Jimbo got to meet several students and plug JB Outdoors and bike riding at the same time. They still think its incredible that he rode that far! Below are two of my English major Freshmen students, Brad and Slinda. They asked if this kind of clothing was fashionable in the U.S.!
This is a classic Chinese pose by the lake at the University. We are posing with our student Joey who is a Mechanical Drawing major but took an English discussion class with both of us.
Our last night in Huangdao we had a wonderful Chinese banquet with the Tang family. We have tutored their son Patrick for the past year and we have become very close with them over that time. They are our liasons with the Chinese culture and dad met a kindred spirit in Lu, the dad over this meal. Below are all the boys toasting with traditional Chinese spirits called Baijiu and Jenny, the mom, and me.

Saying goodbye over the last week or so has been hard! We will miss so many things about China, but most of all our students and the friendships we have cultivated. But right now its still hasn't sunk in that we will be back in the U.S. in 1 week!

We are heading to Dunhuang tomorrow which is in Gansu Province in the Gobi Desert. We are going to see the famous Mogao Buddhist caves, sand surf, ride camels, and sleep in the desert. We will write more about that on our return to the US.

We just wanted to say thanks to all our loyal readers! We will post a final blog on our return.

DB&KM

Welcome to our neighborhood

All done! We're basically just chillin' until Wednesday when Jimbo shows up. Since there's not much to report, we thought we'd give you another glimpse of the normal, daily life of a Chinese person (or, a foreigner living in China).

For some reason, if you walk down any street in China, you're likely to see at least one hair salon. I would guesstimate that hair "stylists" make up about 30% of the work force in China. The greatest part of the hair salons in China is that they go the extra mile - massages and all. Another entertaining aspect of the hair salons are the hair stylists' hair styles. The overwhelming majority of hair stylists are male, and their hair styles usually look like something you'd find in mid 80's MTV video. To demonstrate that point, check out below:
Yes, that's a girl, but there isn't much gender differentiation in hair style. If you're wondering what a shampoo and cut go for here, I bought 15 haircuts for 100 Yuan, which comes out to a little less that $1/cut. We don't want to bore you to long, because after all, we are talking about hair cuts here, but below is a video Darbie shot while I was getting clipped.

Close listeners might have been fortunate enough to hear Kendall's poor but adequate Chinese.
That's just one of the 10 or so hair salons on campus. Across the street is a very popular restaurant section of campus. Since it has gotten warm, it has become even more popular. We ventured over there to see what was up, and came across Kabobs! While there's no doubt that this meat has been sitting out for a while, and eating it is basically a gamble, kabobs never disappoint. They'll put anything on a spear, from bread and peppers to...
What are those? Chicken FEET! Which are really popular by the way. Darbie and I think it's because, compared with a lot of other measly Chinese cuts of chicken, the feet do have an ample proportion of meat. Here's Darbie with more!


So, if you come to China, ignore the inevitable diarrhea and painful stomach cramps, and eat a kabob! At least their good going in!


DB&KM


P.S. We're not lying about strange Chinese cuts of meat. To prove our point...

CHICKEN HEAD!!! At least it looks like the chicken went peacefully.

Bringing the USA to the PRC (People's Republic of China)

We are happy to report that we have finished all our classes. The only thing we have left to do is grade a hundred or so exams. Chinese exams aren't like United States, however, they prefer a lot of multiple choice, matching, and true/false to essays.

During our time in China, we've managed to acquire a lot of stuff that we can't bring back with us. Darbie came up with the idea that we should have a yard sale, and we did just that. Our students had never heard of such a thing; so, it became a learning experience as well as a shopping opportunity. We told our students that a little bit of everything would be on sale anywhere from 1 kuai ($.68) to 3 kuai ($2.04). If you remember back to the Christmas extravaganza, our students love to build up our possessions in their head (they thought we would be giving them Nintendo Wii's and Gucci Purses for Christmas gifts), so the same frenzy whipped up again. So, even though the "yard" sale officially started at 10:00, we had students ringing the buzzer and dying to get in 2o minutes early. You can check out a few of the goodies below:
All the DVDs and books were gone within the first 10 minutes. Of course, any yard sale that Darbie's involved in will have fashionable clothes, and this one was no exception.
At 10:00, we pressed the buzzer and they all ran up the five flights of stairs to get first pickings. And they bought...
I love 007's (James Bond, the only guy in the pic) expression in this picture. He's absolutely blown away by something. And then more came, and bought...
Rummaging through the DVDs and books. They came up with some pretty funny questions too, like in Jesse's picture below.As you can see, he's already got a death grip on the badminton set, but he came and asked about The Old Man and the Sea. "I've heard that first editions are very expensive in America; is this a first edition book?" I told him sorry, and then he said, "Is it at least all in English?" I assured him that it is indeed all English, and is the original version of the book, just not the very first edition of the book. This is why we love of our students. Darbie also shot a video of the opening moments of the sale, and you can check that out too.


It was a lot of fun, and we learned one thing: The Chinese love yard sales. They just about bought everything out within the first half-hour. Students that hardly talked in class during the semester were coming up to us asking how much for this gravy mix, Iron Man DVD, or basketball. They would hand us the money for some thing or another and then ask, "What is this thing, and what does it do?" It was pretty funny, and from the looks on their faces, a highlight of their freshman year. For us, we made a total of 280 yuan which equates to about $40!

For most of the students it was the last time we'd ever see each other and so they gave us gifts. One class all signed the school's official t-shirt, while another gave us a photo album with all their pictures complete with special notes on the back. We were very touched by their gestures of appreciation. It was very similar to the end of a summer camp.

Now we're just trying to stay cool (yes, it's finally hot here) in our non-AC apartment, and bumming around for a little over a week until Jimbo bikes in and we whisk him off to the Gobi Desert.

There's still time for you, too!

DB&KM