Spirit animals, a Hilton stay and trucks vs cars

Oooooh - time for an update.

Here are some pics of our latest adventures ...

We had a great time back in Nanjing, which used to be the capital of China during the early years of the Ming dynasty. On the Purple-gold mountain is a 14th century Ming emperor tomb which has a 1/2 km + spirit walkway of stone animals and guardians up to the tomb.

 Here we are outside the entrance to the tomb - it's not only Japanese schoolgirls who can pose like this...

Nanjing is one of only a few ancient cities that still has it medieval walls, and we spent some time exploring them. Built between 1366 and 1393, what was really cool was finding the stamps on many of the bricks that showed the brickmaker's name and date - if the bricks were poor quality and broke, the emperor would know who to blame!

 Sunset over the city of Nanjing from Xanwu Lake.

Back in Shanghai, we spent a bizarre day at this satellite city Meilan Lake - based on a Swedish town - this is one of the towns that has been built to copy different European cities (we visited Thames Town based on London several months ago) - it actually seems pretty authentic (at least from a distance) - up close, it's, well, just weird ...! There are Spanish, Dutch, German and Italian towns too ... may or may not go to see them too!

We spent last weekend in a city called Hefei - 3 hours inland from Shanghai by bullet train- including some great scenery and crossing the huge Yangtzee River. The town is a little off the tourist trail, which made it a bit more interesting to visit for us. Also ... the Hilton there was having a super special deal, and so instead of our usual hostel stay, we splashed out ($75) on a room at the Hilton - and loved it. LOVED IT!

In one of the local parks we came across this procession of people who were renacting something - no idea, but it looked like they were having a blast. One woman with a (hopefully fake) moustache, a couple of others with boats strapped around them!

 On a sidewalk (the traffic there was the worst we have experienced in China) a truck and a car battled it out for dominance OF THE SIDEWALK/PAVEMENT! Unbelievable. Where could the motorbikes go?

We visited the cool underground tomb of Lord Bao from the 9th century - apparently a very decent chap who did lots of good things and now has temples and pagodas and stuff built for him.

That's all the photos. We also had a great time at a huge Elton John concert - packed full of Westerners! Andy had his final teaching assessment, our offers for next year our coming (no, we're not staying) and we're good. Planning and enjoying our final few weeks here.

November update

We've been local the last couple of weeks - walking and enjoying the fabulous fall weather in Shanghai. We found a great spot a few days ago - via metro - where the Yangtze River, Huangpo River and China Sea meet - it was also the spot where the original fishing village of Shanghai was founded, and also, from what we could make out from the Chinese only musuem, the place where the Japanese landed/invaded when they attacked Shanghai before WWII.

This week we're off to Nanjing again - we went there about 6 months ago but didn't see everything we wanted to. This trip (via bullet train!) will be aboput visiting the Purple-Gold Mountain and the Ming dynasty tombs there.

The USA election was big news here - many Chinese people think highly of Obama. We voted via overseas voting - cool! - and of course were particualry excited to see Washington State be one of the historic states to legalize gay marriage by popular vote. Great news.

As our time here starts to wind down, we're making every effort to enjoy the last few weeks left. Planning a few more trip, but nothing really big, and looking forward to seeing friends and family soon.

All, as usual, is good!

Xian - warriors, walls, mosques and little lions

Just returned from a fabulous few days in Xian - the ancient capital of China. There is a strong Muslim influence in Xian because it was the start/end of the Silk Road and so has a long tradition of Arabic influence. We spent some time in the Muslim Quarter, which frequently reminded us of our travels in Egypt.

 Most intersesting was the Grand Mosque - a large complex of Islamic buildings, but all built in a very traditional Chinese way ... We timed out visit perfectly to see the men arrive and worship

We visited the tomb of Emperor Jingdi - (188-141 BC) who was buried with thousands of mini clay warriors and animals for the afterlife. The very cool thing about this place was that it was all glassed in, so you can walk on top and next to the excavations - very interesting.

Another great thing abot Xian (can you tell we're fans?!) are the intact Ming dynasty city walls (1300's) - at the time, Xian was the biggest city in the world! and the perimeter covers 14km (we walked the whole thing too) - at night, the walls are peaceful and lit by red Chinese lanterns - beautiful!

Of course, Xian is also a modern city - with a lot of hustle and bustle. The traffic was incredibly bad at times, and crossing the road was definitely taking your life into your own hands at times.

I just loved this lion (who is actually quite small) - it seems like it is trying to look ferocious while guarding the entrance to a city park...

Of course (Of Course!) the highlight was a trip to see the Terracotta Warriors and the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang (2000 + years old). There are 3 pits open - here is Pit 2 with most of the warriors not yet excavated - we could see some of them, but most remain in the hollow parts between the raised walls. It is estimated to have 1300 warriors here. All are life size. The actual tomb of the emperor has not been excavated because (apparently) the ancient story of rivers of mercury and traps are true - the soil around the hill shaped tomb has 1000 times more mercury than is normal and so opening it up could be dangerous and very costly ... but who knows what would be in there!!!

 Here is one of the warriors - it is true that each has a unique face - apparently based on individual artists who were later executed to protect the secrets of the tomb. Some warriors still had traces of red, pink, blue and yellow paint ...

 This is Pit 3 - the smallest of the pits contains many of the generals - about 72 warriors in total.

Pit 1 was mind-blowing - about 2000 warriors on display with another 4000 still to be excavated - the area is huge - unbelievable. They have also recently discovered another pit with many more warriors in.

So, there we go - Xian was fabulous in many ways - the food, the sites, the people and the history. Definitely worth a visit - we had a great time!

Shanghai in October

The weather recently has been fabulous - clear sunny skies, fabulous temperatures and warm breezes. We have been busy enjoying our Shanghai life - today we went to the French Concession and had cheap traditional Chinese massages - accupressure-like and very good (if a little painful) and spent some time hanging out in our favorite coffee shop in a garden. Tomorrow we are on a long long hike to see how far we can get! It's nice to explore Shanghai outside and on foot as we spend so much time indoors at work and travelling on the crowded metro.
Last week, we had a great time at the Shanghai Masters Tennis tournament - center court tickets!!! Fab!!! Although very sad at Andy Murray's loss - so close ...
Our Chinese continues to improve - feeling fairly confident now and even a little bit conversational - we have both been learning to read the strange mixture of characters and can now read a little of basic texts (think children's) and have even started a little bit of typing in Chinese!!!
On Friday we're off to Xian for 5 days - plan to see the Terracotta Warriors and various old things - Xian was the ancient capitol of China up until around the 10th century - it has an Arabic feel because it was the end of the Silk Road. All good. Booked into a little hostel inside the medieval city walls. More to follow on our return.

Current favorite song on a bit of a rotation on our computer - Ellie Goulding - Anything Can Happen!!! That's right!!!

Travels with mom

Some photos of our recent travels with Ev's mom ...

Here we are in huge and fabulous Buddhist temple in the ancient canal town of Zhouzhuang

 The posts and trees were covered with red ribbons in places which release the wishes and prayers of the individual that ties them on. We each had a ribbon that we tied together by the large fish pond and let our wishes flutter to the heavens!

The town of Zhouzhuang was a fabulous place to wonder around - the canals date back centuries and formed trading routes between the coast and the inland cities like Beijing. Zhouzhuang was an important and rich town that traded spices and silk between Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing.

 Another day we took a cruise along the Huangpu River, past modern and old buildings to the Yangzi River and South China Sea - here we are going under the Yangpu Bridge

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Mom got quite brave and explored a lot of Shanghai by herself (including a 3 hour hair salon extravaganza all in Chinese) - she also tried some Chinese specialities such as dim-sum, dried bamboo shoots, stuffed lotus root and tofu. We also spent some time wandering the city together - here we are in the French Concession in an arty/trendy shopping area developed from old alleyways and buildings (Tianzifang)

We spent a great weekend in one of our favorite places - Hangzhou - famous for it's beautiful lake, pagodas and temples and long history. It is peaceful and relaxing - here we are enjoying some of the local green tea grown in the nearby tea terraces sitting by the edge of the lake by a pagoda - doesn't get much better than this!

 One of the highlights was a visit to the enormous Lingyin Temple that dates back centuries

 Despite it's age, the temple is still very actively used and we saw many worshippers praying and burning paper offerings for their ancestors

Although most breathtaking of all was the 10th - 14th century rock carvings that covered the hill there - supposedly magically flown there - FeiLai Feng (The Hill that Flew There) - there seemed like hundreds of carvings and they were truly breathtaking - definitely a highlight of our recent travels - and how cool to share it with mom.

Now, we are into the National Holiday with several days off work - it's time for us to commit to plans and make bookings as we prepare for what is next in 4 months time .... In the meantime, Andy has begun training for a 1/2 marathon in December and we just scored tickets to the Shanghai Tennis Masters (center court!!!) to see the likes of Nadal and Murray duke it out - Andy is so excited!!!

September Update

Sorry for not updating sooner ...

Our friend Helen arrived at the end of August and spent a week with us before heading off to explore other parts of China - she is due back in Shanghai in a few days after visiting Beijing, Xian, Guilin and Yangshuo. In the meantime we have been getting ready to welcome Ev's mom to Shanghai - she arrives today for 3 weeks.

As for us ... work has been fine although there have been many changes and things going on - we are doing fine and beginning to seriously plan for next year. Once our visitors leave it will be time to commit to plans by booking tickets and making final plans as we will have to be ready to leave Shanghai in a few more months. Looks like we will be taking some time off (of course!!!) with a trip to India, visits to the UK and USA and a month off to walk the pilgrimage trail in Northern Spain from the French Pyrenees across the north of Spain to the cathedral at Santiago - an old and famous pilgrimage since Medieval times and something we have wanted to do for years.... After that, we will either teach some more (Japan, Turkey and Russia are the frontrunners) or get visas for New Zealand through Andy's OT license ...

We have booked to go to Xian in October to see the Terracotta Warriors and the ancient capital of China. That will probably be our last big ticket trip in China, although we hope to go back to Nanjing and Hangzhou, as well as some more local trips, such as to the island of Punto Shan (near Shanghai) and the reported birthplace of the goddess Guan Yin.

We'll update soon with some visitor photos and more news.
xx

Typhoon update

We survived the typhoon - work closed early on Wednesday when the storm was upgraded to category A. It was pretty stormy and windy, some trees and signs down and lots and lots of rain, but all in all it wasn't too bad - Shanghai escaped fairly unscathed compared to other areas. So all is fine there!

Apart from that, we've been working and planning and relaxing ... Not a lot more to report for now. Visitors coming soon. Hoping to book a trip to Xian soon. So really just taking it easy with the typhoon or humid-hot weather.

Shanghai summer

Things keep ticking along here in Shanghai. The weather has been very hot and so we've been taking it easy (by our standards) ... Today we were out in the suburbs in a huge forest park having a picnic and just chilling. Sipping kumquat lemonade or iced pear tea ... and eating Western food (at least for now ... food poisoning episode last week has dampened our experiments with strange foods for now!).We are about half way through our time in China which is amazing as it is going fast. On the days when it all seems a bit much we try to remember that this time next year it will all be over. With 6 months left we are starting to look at what next .... with the condo rented for 2 years we are footloose and fancy free. We are looking into various options - more international teaching (Japan? Russia? Turkey? ...?), volunteering or renting a beach hut and not doing ... We do plan to visit UK and USA as we miss both! We also want to fit in some traveling too (of course) and India seems to be calling ... so stay tuned with these developments!

We are quite pleased with our progress with learning Chinese and are now often complimented on it by Chinese speakers ... not that we can debate the pros and cons of international politics, but we can order food and train tickets and find places and tell people off ... Also we are doing well learing to read Chinese too - 400 characters and counting! So that's all good.

Apart from that we have been relaxing and enjoying Shanghai and making the most of this unique time in China.

Until next time ...

China travels - big Buddhas, baby pandas and Dragon's Backbone

We are back from a wonderful vacation to Chengdu, Gulin and Dragon's Backbone.
Here are some of the photos!
Our first few days were spent in Chengdu, a large city in south-west China. It is famous for it's spicy food - what we know as Sichuan food in the USA (including Kung Pow Chicken - correct (Chinese) pronunication is Gong Boa Chicken), it's teahouse culture and pandas!
We spent a great morning at the Panda Research Center where they have been very succesful breeding pandas - some are sent to zoos around the world, and some are released back into the wild. We were very lucky to see baby pandas - this one is about a year old ...

 The center also works with the endangered, but lesser known, red panda - smaller and more aggressive (despite looking like teddy bears).

 One of the mature pandas eating bamboo. We saw about 30 pandas in total - cool!

We really enjoyed Chengdu - the food was fabulous and the people very friendly. We spent a couple of afternoons doing what the locals do, and hanging out a teahouse - never ending cups of green tea and people watching. One day we got chatting with some local kids at the next table, and they invited us to play Mah Jong - they even taught us how to play!



We had an adventurous day and took ourselves off across the province in a series of 6 local buses - 3 there, 3 back (all figured out and made happen with our improving Chinese - Ev's pronuniciation and Andy's vocabulary! - hurray us!) to visit the town of LeShan - home of the biggest Buddha in the world - 1200 years old and carved out of the cliff face. You can get an idea of how big it is by the size of the people on the left side of the picture - the toe nail is about the size of an average person!



 A preserved street in Chengdu called Jin Li - old store fronts and a great food market where we tried various local specialities.

 One of the things we love about Chinese people is they really don't give a *#@! what other people think - I mean, you gotta love this girl! Ever seen someone sitting under an umbrella on a bus before?

Next, we flew to Guilin in southern China to visit the world famous River Li and mountain scenery for 3 nights - we spent a wonderful day cruising the river and soaking up the amazing views.

 We also managed to get onto a tour to a local village (Baisha) to visit the comorant fishermen and the 600 year old Dragon Bridge (where we are standing) - we managed to do this for free .... The rest of our boat tour group wanted to go and we didn't want to pay the extra $40 so kept saying 'No thanks' - in the end the tour leader told us to come for free but not to tell anyone else!

Final stop on our tour was two days in the rice growing village of Ping An - up in the mountains 3 hours from Guilin (what a bus ride ... :<) - in what is called the Dragon's Backbone. Fabulous rice terraces have been cut into the sides of the moutains and there are no cars or buses in the village. Peaceful and relaxing and gorgeous views.

 We basically spent two days drinking and going on short hikes. Wherever we went, the views were amazing.

Now we are back in Shanghai and taking it easy this weekend. We went out for a big Chinese dinner with some of Andy's students the other night to try lots more interesting food.

We are looking forward to our visitors - Helen and mom, and thinking about our next trip in October - to the Terracotta Warriors and Xi'an. Chinese language is going well, and we are now also learing to read Chinese characters! A little easier than it seems once you get the basics down.

Until next time ...