Sunday, September 21, 2008

Traditional Chinese Diaper


China has a population of over 1.3 billion. Considering this collective wisdom in raising babies, Kelsi and I thought it appropriate to pick up on a few child rearing techniques before starting our own family. We thought that the most brilliant idea was the Chinese way of diapering... or the lack thereof. Just in case you didn't notice at first glance, take another look at the pants these kids are wearing. We call them "Pee Pee pants," and about 95% of Chinese children wear them. Imagine the savings on diapers! Not to mention no arguments about who has to change them. We'll understand if you cover everything in tarps when we come to visit with our future children.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

New Blog Posts

We published a bunch of new posts - as you can see, we finally had time to add some pictures while waiting for our Tibet permit, but they posted out of order. The best viewing order for making sense reading & chronologically is:
  1. Chinglish
  2. Everest Base Camp Training
  3. Huashan Mountain Photos
  4. Huashan Love Lock
  5. The Bar & The Gold Medal
  6. Terracotta Warrior Photos
  7. Pingyao Picture
  8. Beijing Pictures
  9. More Mongolia Photos

1. Chinglish










When English and Spanish speakers attempt to speak in their non-native language, the resulting language is often called "Spanglish." Spanglish is usually full of humorous mistakes and mispronunciations. Similar things happen between Chinese and English. This post is dedicated to humorous signs written in Chinglish.

2. Everest Base Camp Training

We spent our first 2 days in Xi'an arranging our Tibet visa, which we should have by tonight after 4 days of waiting. Once that was in place, we decided to see what else to do around here other than visit the famous Terracotta Warriors. After seeing so many temples and other sites, we were ready to do something active and away from the city so we decided to hike a mountain about an hour and a half out of Xi'an, Mount Huashan.


According to the local students that we hiked with, Huashan is the most dangerous mountain to hike in China. That is very likely the case. The hike was a lot like Angel's Landing in Zions National Park (Southern Utah). It was very steep, requiring single file ascent using a chain bolted to the mountain in many areas, and there were vertical cliff drop offs on both sides of the narrow path.


Originally we had planned to ride to the town adjacent to the hike and spend the night at a guest house before hiking the following day; however, on the bus ride out there (we took the local bus rather than a tour through the hostel) we met a group of college students who were hiking that night to arrive at the top by sunrise. Even though we waited for the local bus that morning standing in line for 1/2 an hour then toured the Terracotta Warriors for a few hours on our feet then stood in line 2 hours for the bus to Huashan Mountain resulting in VERY sore feet, we still hiked that night with a group of 5 Chinese college students.

When we arrived at the base of the mountain, we had a pep talk by someone at a local restaurant telling us all the benefits of hiking at night. First off, since the mountain is so dangerous and has so many cliffs, it is better to hike at night when you can't actually see the dangers, because if you hike in the day you may be too scared. That fact alone sold us! We decided hiking at night would be much safer and less crowded.


After our hike, we weren't sure whether it actually was safer and less crowded! There were at least 10,000 people on the mountain that night. Where else in the world other than China do you have Disneyland crowds hiking a very steep dangerous mountain in the middle of the night?! It turned out it was a holiday weekend (the Moon Festival) - and everyone was off work and out of school, so they wanted to see the sunrise at the top of the most dangerous mountain in China to kick off the Moon Festival.


There were many bottlenecks waiting in line for the single file ascents up the steep ridges and verticle cliffs. It was crazy and hilarious! If the mountain wasn't dangerous enough in and of itself, the throngs of jostling Chinese students made it even crazier. Well, we made it safely and ascended 3 peaks. We were even sore the next day - so I think we should be ready now for Mount Everest Base Camp next week :)

3. Huashan Mountain Photos




4. Huashan Love Lock

Some sections of Mount Huashan's safety chains are covered in layers of padlocks. In order to ensure happy-golden-lucky fortune, Chinese tradition requires that you buy a lock, enscribe it with your name, lock it to a safety chain on the mountain, and then throw the key to the lock over a cliff while making a wish. Kelsi and I decided to try out the tradition, and it has been smooth sailing ever since.

5. The Bar and The Gold Medal














Today was the Chinese Moon Day celebration, and it turned out to be a most auspicious and lucky day for both of us. First off, Rusty recieved news that he passed the Utah bar exam to become an attorney. On an even more exciting note, Rusty awarded Kelsi a gold medal on top of the South peak of Huashan, one of the most dangerous mountain peaks in China.

We came to China during the Beijing Olympics expecting to be spectators of the Olympic games, so it was a huge surprise to Kelsi when she recieved the gold medal at the top of the peak. In reality, Rusty bought the medal at a local shop and then awarded the gold medal to Kelsi not for summiting, but for being an exempliary wife since about 10,000 (literally 10,000) Chinese also made it to the summit. It was still enjoyable on the way down when a few people stopped Kelsi to ask her whether she was an Olympian. We just told them that she won the medal for summiting the mountain and they looked confused.







6. Terracotta Warrior Photos






7. Pingyao Picture



8. Beijing Pictures




Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven

9. More Mongolia Photos





We had a couple people ask what a Ger was so here's a photo of the inside and the outside of a Ger we slept in around August 20th when it snowed on us! You might have heard of a "Yurt," and a Ger is about the same thing. We also liked this photo of a traditional Mongolian man in a small town.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Back In China

We made it back to Beijing and found a hostel for half the price we found the first time we were in Beijing, and in a way cool location a couple blocks from the Forbidden City and on a really cute outdoor market street. We spent one night there using our day to visit another cool temple and the Pearl Market which offered tons of knock off items such as an iphone for around $130 but it was so obviously not real. Rusty actually enjoyed shopping! The bargaining was really fun and hilarious, but we only bought a few cheap luggage locks and retractable earphones.

We caught a train that evening to Pingyao, which may likely be one of our favorite cities we've ever visited. It is so adorable being surrounded by a city wall with all the traditional architecture preserved. It may even be more interesting than Tallin, Estonia. We'll be heading to Xi'an to see the Terracotta warriors in a couple days (for a more historical / hysterical account of the warriors, see Mummy 3, the movie). After Xi'an we plan to head toward Tibet on the highest train ever built (ask Kelsi's dad for interesting engineering details).

Pictures pending more time (they take a really long time to transfer from camera - esp. on the super slow internet we've been running into).

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Good Job Dad!

OK this was a great experience. So, thanks to Kelsi's great mentoring by her dad, we brought a whistle with us on our trip. All hostels have a sign posted that says not to go out after midnight as it is not safe, plus we heard TWO stories in ONE night of muggings by other people staying in our hostel. One of the muggings was three locals against two guys. So we have Kelsi wear the whistle anytime we're out after it's dark and last night we got to use it. It was kind of hilarious. The stories of the muggings generally included being bumped into a bit by a small group and pick pocketed in the process. Well, we happened into a perfect place to get bumped into by 4-5 guys, actually, & they were acting like they wanted to show us something - maybe to buy - but mostly they were blocking the sidewalk where we couldn't get by since there was a building on one side and a tree fenced area on the other. We were trying to brush them off & get past, but then it clicked that this looked exactly like stories we heard. So Kelsi started blowing the whistle, which startled them and scattered the group. It was kind of hilarious but also potentially saving us from loosing a few bucks. Anyway, we laughed about it for the rest of our walk home.

We take a train Friday morning back to Beijing, so we've had a few days to kill. We took an overnight trip to a nearby national park, checked out some local temples, the "black" market and attended a fantastic traditional Mongolian music & dance concert. The throat singing is amazing. We thought of a good description for how the Mongolian music and dance culture seemed to us: it's Asia meets America West 1800s. They were wearing beautiful Asian costumes with some Asian country horse riding type music while dancing like they were riding a horse. We also went to 2 movies of the 3 they have showing. One of them was The Mummy 3 played in English with Mongolian subtitles. The other 2 were in Mongolian without any English, but we went to one anyway because it was Ghengis Khan and we thought it would be interesting & we'd get most of the idea. We were relieved after two hours when the theater staff killed the show and flipped on the lights in the middle of the Khan's grand coronation scene.