Brainwashin'

So, teaching. I know that's probably the thing most of my friends back in America are most curious about, so after the brief introduction to what's going on before, this is my first subject to tackle.

The Soft Grand Pre-Re-Opening

Okay, so probably anyone reading this knows by now that I'm teaching in Korea, and that it's been roughly 18 months since my last post. So, let's get on with it!


I have no idea how often I'll be posting about Korea topics here... at some point I might even do some retrospectives on travel in Asia in 2010. I'm sure you can handle it.

Oh yeah, that bit.

So, I was going to write about the last day of my trip in Xiamen, but it just isn’t that interesting. I’ll throw in a couple of pictures to discuss the few highlights, but there weren’t many.

Jing and I’s first stop on the itinerary for the day was the Xiamen University, which has the repuation of being the most beautiful of all university campuses in Southern China. It was a bit of a snoozefest to me, but the buildings were certainly cleaned up and spiffy, in the way that they strived for, anyway. The problem was twofold: A) there just wasn’t that much of the campus to look at, and B) the damn wide open soviet realist style paved walkways. They could really use some more plants there, the climate is perfect for having a very lushly terrascaped place. Anyway, here’s a few pictures:

The King Donut

So, the next day, Jing and I got up bright and early to get a bus to Yongding Village, or Yongding County, depending on how you want to translate it. I guess county works a bit better, its not just one small village.

There’s one distinctive thing about Yongding county, and that’s the legacy left behind by the Hakka ethnic peoples who live in the area. The Hakkas were a pretty mobile people, and live over a vast swathe of East Asia, going as far south as Singapore and as far east as Taiwan, and their language is variously referred to as Hakka, Minnan (literally means “People of the South”) or Taiwanese, although only Taiwanese people (who are mostly not Hakka) call it Taiwanese.

A Taste of the Old World

So, the last trip took in China that I have to write about, aside from ones from the beginning of the year for which I’ve lost all pictures, but might be able to get around to sometime 4 or 5 months from now, was a trip I took during the spring to the province of Fujian, with the purpose of visiting three locations: Xiamen, Wutaishan, and Yongding Village.

I never actually got to Wutaishan, so this instead will just be about Xiamen and Yongding.

Onto Some More Rocks

So the next morning, I got up and ready to go to Yangshuo. I went to the cafe area of the hostel and ordered a sandwich, which was disappointing in the way that Western food made in Asian hostels usually is. Ya Ya, the girl I had agreed to go to Yangshuo with, also got up at the right time . . . I think at about 9:30am we set out for a bus to Yangshuo. It would be a short ride, but I did my best to make it horrible by allowing her to continue to talk to me about Taiwan.

A Few More Trips

I’m sitting now as I type this in the port of Mawei, a special district in the Chinese city of Fuzhou, located just across the straits of Taiwan. In approximately one and a half hours from the time I’ve started writing this, I’ll be aboard that boat, heading to Taiwan, and leaving China behind, for who knows how long.

This means a couple of things. First, it means that over the next couple days I’m going to crank out a couple of blog posts about previous travels that I haven’t yet covered, and maybe another couple of shorts about Shanghai.

A Trip Down the Thames . . . in Shanghai

A couple of days after the American Dream fiasco, I set off in the direction of yet another strange part of Shanghai that I had read about online. Only technically located within the administrative district of Shanghai, there was a housing development project in whats honestly another town, called SongJiang New City, where the community is designed to look as though it were old traditional England.

Yeah, you read that right. London in the suburbs of Shanghai. I can feel the eyes rolling now, and trust me, I did the same.

Breaking Into the American Dream

So, a few weeks ago, my former roommate Jillian Corey came to visit for a weekend. She was one of my three roommates from the first semester; although she went home for the Chinese holiday break during the month of February, she came back to China in March, but this time to Beijing, to pursue another semester of study. Finally she came down to visit, and amongst other things, we had one particular goal, which was to go break into the American Dream.

SMP, Shanghai's Barren Skatepark

So, you'll scarcely be able to find any information online about this place, although it does have its own website. Shanghai is home to the world's biggest skatepark, supposedly. Considering how there's no information on it on wikipedia, and its own website seems to have been updated last a couple years ago, I wouldn't be surprised if the record has since been broken.

Into the Expo

Its taken long enough, I know, but at last I bring you the expo post. I finally went to the Expo 2010 in Shanghai this week, and here I’ll share with you my impressions of the site and the event.

Some of you reading this definitely know of the expo, a few might actually know what it really is, and maybe one or two of you have actually been there. For pretty much everyone else, here’s some background information:

Also known as “World’s Fair”, these expos have their roots in the London Great Exhibition of 1851.

Everyone Loves a Model

Or at least, everyone in China loves BEING a model.

In truth, I should have quite a few more pictures to support this story, but I've since discovered that a good number of the ones that were relevant were way too washed out; also, if anyone can tip me on how to embed video into these blog posts, I can put up a couple of those also.

Anyway, so, roaming around Shanghai, if you go to any of the "nice" parts of the city, you have a better chance than you could ever expect of stumbling across a modeling photo shoot. Recently, a good friend of mine from San Diego, a guy named Nathan, came to visit for two weeks, and despite the fact that I've already been experiencing this phenomenon for about a full year, it was nevertheless amazing just how many models we came across. Almost every day, we saw at least one photo shoot.

Not Exactly Chingrish, but...

So, here's another simple picture story.

China is also a land of many stores that feature English names, for reasons that escape any notion of logic. I find them in places where the number of English-speaking Chinese people is almost nil, but even in a place like Shanghai, there aren't that many. Nevertheless, they probably think it helps branding somehow, making it seem classier or more international. Whatever.A lot of the time it just ends up sounding weird. On with the pictures!

Finally, an episode of Chingrish

This has been a long time coming. It won't be the last entry I do about funny signs in Asia, that's for sure. Most everyone knows, or at least has heard of, the suspicious translations to be found in Asia, so here I am to show you some of the gems I've come across!

A New Era Continued (featuring the impossible)

As I'm sure many of you know, China is a place of remarkably fast-paced progress and development. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the place was close to a barren wasteland a few decades ago. Double digit growth, toppling Japan for #2 GDP in the world, blah blah blah.

The truly important story here is that thanks to their disregard for reality, China can pull off the impossible. You know the old Douglas Adam adage about throwing yourself at the ground and missing? Think along those lines. If you don't know something can't happen, then who says it won't?

A New Era Continued (featuring bears)

So, I'm going for a different feel for a bit.

I've still got some long form stories within me to tell, but those are on hold. In fact, I'm working on writing them also, but I'm writing various things.

For the time being, I'm going to start doing roughly a post every day about some smaller topics, usually involving one picture and a small story. I know this is actually pretty typical of blogging for most people, but it runs against mostly what I've done so far, so to me this is micro-posting.

The End of This Road

To be honest, my next couple of days in Vang Vieng were mostly repeats of the same, but with the British kids instead. We played around in the water a lot more; I hardly drank at all, except for taking some of the radioactive snake whiskey shots just for kicks. Instead I just subjected myself to the cruelest of water punishments my body’s ever handled, and pushed myself more and more; I think, ultimately, the biggest drop I took was about 20 feet or so into the water, which was pretty wild. I would love to go back and push myself some more; who knows when Laos will call me back.

Vang Vieng Some More: The Day Out

So, the day everyone was leaving, I went and rented a bike, and was deadset on just riding and seeing whatever was see-able. I hopped on and gave it a trial run, and rode around the small town a bit, seeing Evan before he left, and hung out with him for a little until his van showed up. I also did a bit of translation for the “front desk”, such as it was, at his guesthouse, between them and a prospective Chinese client. The Chinese person didn’t speak English, let alone Lao, and the Lao employee didn’t speak Chinese, so I moderated between them and got the guesthouse a client, in the end. I should have gotten a commission!

Vang Vieng Rock City 2: Rock Harder

Currently I write this while cruising in a taxi, with the glare of the sun upon me I might make a few extra typos in the first portion of this, so please give me your leniency!

So, the morning after my caving and kayaking trek, I met up with Evan to get breakfast. Another well-documented phenomenon about Vang Vieng is its ample restaurants aimed entirely at Westerners that have tons of televisions set up, upon which they show endless reruns of Friends. There’s a couple of restaurants that decide to mix it up with some Simpsons, and I saw one showing Family Guy.

Vang Vieng Rock City

So, Vang Vieng. This place needs a bit of an introduction. Ten years ago, it was on no one’s radar. Something changed. It got listed in Lonely Planet, for one reason and one reason only: tubing.