Fall Update

This began as a post about early an early autumn visit from my mom and dad as well as a trip to South Korea's signature national park, Seoraksan. Then, replays of Michigan football games began to consume my Sundays, and, after loading some photos, I simply put off writing anything during the week. By the time I got ready to write, I decided to turn the post into one long post about everything I did this autumn. Because it is difficult to arrange photos once I upload them, this post is completely out of chronological order. Just go with it.

THE GAME

I watched the game at Antonio's place. We started watching classic games from the rivalry that he had downloaded at 4 PM and continued to do so until College Game Day started at midnight. We watched the game live, through all the ups and downs, our screams and cheers probably annoying Antonio's neighbors. I can't find words to express the joy I felt after Avery picked off Baxton Miller. It may have been the single happiest moment of my life to date. Sure, the mid-late 90s were awesome, but I didn't appreciate it as much back then. I missed home more than ever before that day. I would have given anything to be back in Ann Arbor for just a night. Antonio and I made the best of it with some celebratory shots, and, following a power nap, headed out to watch the game again on replay at a Western-style sports bar.

Halloween

I think I mentioned in last year's autumn post that Koreans celebrate Halloween the way Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo. For most of them it's essentially meaningless, but a select few use it as an excuse to have a good time. A few stores and restaurants use it for promotions, and all of the English kindergartens celebrate it. As was the case last year, most girls had incredibly boring and unoriginal princess costumes. Also like last year, I ended up with two Snow Whites in one class. Most boys chose to dress up as something that could either kill you or severely maim you. Much more interesting!

Ricky (left) was the blue Power Ranger and Jae Yong (right) was Optimus Prime. Both are in Pine Class (my partner class).

Junho's policeman costume was probably the most original in either class. Alexa and I went as bacon and eggs. Once the costume idea was decided upon, it was not necessary to discuss who got to be bacon.

Gwanaksan

As mentioned in many previous posts, great hiking is only a metro ride away any time you are in Seoul. This fall Alexa and I decided to tackle Gwanaksan, a mountain just southwest of our home. We went in late October when the colors are perfect. At the peak of the mountain is a cliff-side Buddhist temple. Before embarking on our hike we stopped at our favorite French bakery in Seoul to grab a baguette to go with the cheese we had for our picnic.

Mom and Dad Visit

Okay, we are back to September, and everything will be in roughly chronological order from here on out. My mom and dad visited for the first half of September, a visit planned to coincide with the Korean holiday of Chuseok. I greeted them at the airport, and we took the metro back to the city. I showed them to their hotel, or at least where the hotel was located on the map I'd printed off. After looking around for what felt like an hour, we called the hotel and found out that they were located two subway stops away. We hopped in a taxi and gave the driver the new address. After a rough start, we unwound with some Korean BBQ for dinner.

Bears vs. Twins

I used my mom and dad's visit as an excuse to do things I'd been wanting to do while in Korea but just hadn't gotten around to. One of the things at the top of the list was attending a baseball game. Baseball is quite popular in Korea, and while it doesn't compete with World Cup Fever, we had been told that games were quite exciting. Seoul has three teams in the league, and two of them share a stadium that's three or four subway stops away.

Antonio and I are both from Southeast Michigan and attended the same university, hence we share all the same favorite sports teams. We decided that rooting for different teams in the Korean Professional Baseball would make things more interesting and allow us to talk some smack to each other. We flipped a coin to decide which teams would become our favorites. I clearly won the toss because I ended up with the Doosan Bears, a team vastly superior to the LG Twins, as evidenced by their three KPB titles compared to the Twin's two.

Each stadium is divided in two, one side for the home team and one for the visitors. For the game we attended, the Bears were visitors in their own stadium. I got our tickets in the Bears section. Each section has its own cheers, chants, traditions, and, most importantly cheerleaders. These highly motivational women do whatever it takes to lift the spirits of the mighty Doosan Bears.



The Doosan Bears controlled the play and clung to a 3-1 lead for the better part of the game. Then, in the bottom of the 8th, with a stroke of sheer luck, a Twins player hit a three run homer, a clear deviation from the mean. Antonio got the last laugh that tragic night, but the Doosan Bears shall rise again (side note: both teams failed to make the playoffs).

Chuseok Party with Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad were lucky enough to be in town for one of Korea's most important holidays, Chuseok. In case you forgot or didn't read my post last year, Chuseok is basically a Thanksgiving-like holiday, where Koreans give thanks to their ancestors for the bountiful harvest. They make rice cakes called songpyeon and dress in traditional hanboks. All of the kids showed up in their ornate hanboks, only to be immediately bribed by my mother: a hug for a lollipop. Mom also enjoyed reading the kids a story each day she visited, which of course was accompanied with more candy.

The kids decided it would be a good idea to make a lollipop for my dad out of blocks, then continued to think it would be a good idea for the rest of the day. Dad must have eaten 15-20 imaginary lollipops. Below on the right is a picture of my whole class in the hanboks.

Dad used his skills as a former soccer coach to try to teach the kids how to play a hacky-sack-like game. It took them a while to realize that they needed to wait until the ball was on its way down to kick upward. Towards the end of the day, my kids decided that Dad's white hair needed a little color. They pretended to use crayons to dye it for him. This was mortifying to one of my supervisors that walked by, but I explained to her that my parents were just having fun with the kids. Later, she quipped that the kids probably thought dad was a grandfather. Though it's not time for that yet, Mom and Dad got to practice what it was like to come to visit kids of mine, rile them up, spoil them, then leave for me to deal with. I think they have it down pretty well...

DMZ

Before coming to Korea, the only tourist destination in the country I was aware of was the DMZ. It was always at the top of my list of things to do, but it requires significant advanced planning, so for the first year it sat on the back burner. By the time my new contract started, I knew my parents were going to visit, so I saved a trip to the DMZ as something we could do together.

A month or two in advance I had to contact the USO (who runs the tours) and to reserve the spots. We had to show up on the military base a few hours before I usually wake up on the weekends. We boarded a bus and headed to the DMZ. The first stop was the Joint Security Area (JSA), which is an area jointly administered by the North and South. Prior to 1976 to be that soldiers of both sides could be on either side of the border within the JSA. Following the murder of two U.S. soldiers with axes in that year, both sides agreed not to cross the demarcation line.

The JSA is the closest that most people can get to North Korea. You can literally look across the border and see the North Korean soldiers watching you. You can also enter one of the blue buildings which straddle the border. When you stand in the north end of the building, you are officially in North Korean territory. Below is a picture of the border (left) and a picture of me in North Korea (right). The South Korean soldier is guarding the door, either to protect me from North Koreans or to prevent me from defecting to the utopia created by the recently passed Dear Leader.

Immediately across the border is a modern-looking city with a massive flagpole flying the North Korean flag. At initial glance you might think that the city looks fairly nice. You might start to think that maybe life in North Korea isn't that bad, and perhaps life is not all that terrible for the 0 inhabitants of that ghost town. That's right, the North Koreans built an entire town on the border to encourage South Koreans to defect to the prosperous North.

At the gift shop they sold a few North Korean products. I purchased some blueberry whiskey, which was utterly disgusting to drink. After visiting the JSA, we toured a tunnel that the North Koreans were planning to burrow under the border with and stage an invasion. It is one of three tunnels that has been discovered so far, and it's reasonable to expect there are a few more out there. Pictures inside the tunnel were prohibited.

Seoraksan National Park

After parting ways with my parents I still had one major thing to do on my Korea checklist: a trip to Seoraksan National Park. The park is located in northeast South Korea where the mountains meet the Pacific Ocean. The park features mountains, canyons, waterfalls, and jagged rock formations. We visited during a three day holiday weekend through a group called Adventure Korea. It was the same group that organized the rafting and bungee jumping trip that I went on in June. The group organizes tours for expats, allowing us to see the country conveniently and cheaply.

The first day we drove from Seoul to the park, hiked for 4-5 hours, then went to our hotel. The mountains that day weren't too high, but they were scraggly and clouds of fog floated right over them. The second day we rose bright and early for a 12 hour hike through the heart of the park. We climbed the highest peak, ate lunch there, then spent the afternoon descending and hiking through canyons back to the park entrance. We were there in early October, which is a little bit too early to see the autumn colors blanketing the landscape. That said, as we hiked up the mountains, they caught fire, and we got to see plenty of beautiful colors. The pictures can tell the story better than I can.

The final day we did one more brief 1-2 hour hike through a canyon to see a waterfall before returning home. I have some more great pictures, and you can check them out in my facebook album by clicking on this link.

So that basically sums up my autumn. On Friday I fly out to a small island in the Philippines called Coron for a well-deserved one week vacation. That will be the topic of my next post, but don't count on it being up too soon, as there will be plenty of college football games to watch on delay when I get home.

Return to China

I recently returned from my second trip to China, where I spent my one week vacation. I visited three cities: Xian, Suzhou, and Shanghai. This is going to be a massive post, so brace yourself. I'll start with the most important thing:

Food

Xian has a large Muslim community concentrated in the Muslim quarter, which has been a part of the city for centuries. Muslim culture has a surprising influence on food in China, as many of the lamb dishes taste like they could be from the Middle East. Xian is famous for one particular dish which is heavily influenced by the Muslim community there: Paomo.


The dish consists of lamb and lamb broth, scallions, glass noodles, and crumbled unleavened bread. Admittedly, it is not a very "Chinese" sounding dish. It was delicious though. I ate it for lunch each of the three days I was in Xian.

The best dinner I had in Xian was at a Sichuanese restaurant where we ate at our final night. Sichuan is a province/region in China, famous for its peppery cuisine. While the food certainly is spicy, that is only part of the sensation. Sichuanese peppers leave a "tingling" feeling in your mouth as well as setting it on fire. We had a Sichuan chicken dish, with about as much pepper as chicken, and some amazing soup. The soup had a sour but savory broth and contained meatballs and sprouts.

















Suzhou was disappointing from a gastronomic point of view. Most of the restaurants near our hostel were coffee shops, and the better ones closed early. Thus we were stuck eating at the same bad restaurant for dinner each night. We did have some amazing dim sum for breakfast one day. Like most English menus in China, there were some interestingly-named, but very tasty dishes featured. The "born fried steamed buns" (below right) were fantastic. We also had a snack at a bakery/pastry shop. It was a flaky pastry stuffed with BBQ pork (below left).

















We did have one good lunch in Suzhou; my favorite dish from the meal was the shredded pork dish pictured below on the right. Despite being a terrible restaurant, the establishment we frequented twice had several intriguing dishes on the menu. I couldn't resist ordering the "shredded pork vegetarian soul." Unfortunately, "soul" was soup and "vegetarian" was tofu, so what sounded like a manly pork dish was a bland pork-tofu soup.















The dim sum place also had authentic jasmine tea (below left). While I am usually very adventurous in trying a country's potato chips (the Spicy Hot Pot Lays I tried were tasty), I did not try the blueberry Lays Stax.




















Shanghai was a return to deliciousness. The fried spareribs tasted like Americanized Chinese food back home (which I miss). My favorite vegetable in the world is Chinese long beans. They are stir-fried with tons of garlic and ground pork.















We stopped at another Sichuanese restaurant in Shanghai. The lamb dishes and Sichuan Beef were delicious.

Xian

Drum and Bell Towers, Muslim Quarter, and Shaanxi History Museum

Now that the important part is over, I will get on to the specifics of my trip. Our first stop was Xian, a city famous for the Terracotta Warriors, an underground army of hundreds of soldiers that guard the 1000 year old tomb of a Qin Dynasty emperor. I'll discuss the warriors, which are about 40 minutes outside the city, later in the post. Xian, however, is an great tourist destination in its own right. The previously mentioned Muslim Quarter is home to Xian's Muslim community and features restaurants, shops, and a millennium old mosque that blends Chinese and Islamic architecture.

Right nest to the Muslim Quarter is the Drum Tower. I was lucky enough to catch a performance.





The tower was guarded by a fierce Tang Dynasty warrior (below). After visiting the Drum Tower I visited the Bell Tower.

After visiting many of the sights it started to rain. I figured this was the best time to visit the Shaanxi History Museum. When I approached the museum, much to my disappointment, I noticed a massive slow moving line in front of the ticket office. It easily could have been a hour and a half wait. It seems I wasn't the only one with the museum idea. It was later in the day and I was tired, so I decided to go back to the hostel. Just as I turned around I was approached by a Chinese man who spoke excellent English. I have learned to be skeptical of such people, so I was extremely cautious when talking to him. He offered me a museum ticket for double the ticket office price (which was around $3). He said he'd stay with me until I got into the museum. Reluctantly, I walked up to the entrance with him, then handed him the money. I walked right into the museum and saved myself an hour and a half wait in the pouring rain for an extra $3. The guy got his extra cash, I saved lots of time, and we all were better off after the exchange. China is starting to master this capitalism thing in a hurry.

The museum centers on the era for which Xian was the capital of Imperial China from roughly 250 BC-900 AD. It contains models of the Terracotta Warriors, ceramics, weapons, and a host of other artifacts. It was a small museum with limited English labels, so I was out the door before I would have entered the museum had I waited.

Xian City Walls

By far the most impressive sight in the city of Xian itself is its perfectly intact city walls. The walls are about 30 feet high and wide enough for a four lane highway to be paved over them. The first time I visited it was slightly rainy and relatively early in the morning. After getting away from the South Gate, I had the wall largely to myself.

Great and Small Goose Pagodas

Pagodas are to China what churches are to Europe. There are at least a couple in most major cities. Xian has two, The Great Goose Pagoda and the Small Goose Pagoda. The Great One is on the left and the Small One is on the right.

Terracotta Warriors

The biggest disappointment of our trip was the Terracotta Warriors, the premier tourist attraction in Xian. A short explanation is required. Alexa planned to meet her parents in Hawaii for summer break. She booked her flight for the last week of July, only to have our school change the dates of our vacation to the first week in August. That means Alexa had to sacrifice one week of pay for two weeks off, one in Hawaii and one in China. I spent the first couple days in Xian seeing the sights on my own and waited for Alexa to make the side trip to the Warriors. After talking to a couple other travelers at our hostel, we thought we had a nice day long itinerary that got us back to the Xian train station on time for our 5:30 train to Suzhou.

When we hopped off the bus we discovered that we were a long walk away from the excavation site. By the time we found the ticket office and walked to the site, we were 45 minutes behind schedule. Even if we had known exactly where we were going, it would have taken a half hour to walk to the site and buy tickets. We did not budget an hour long "round trip" from the bus stop to the museum. Thus, we had to rush through the three pits of warriors and did not have adequate time to appreciate them.

The Terracotta Army was buried with Emperor Qin Shi Hunag, the founder of the Qin Dynasty who unified China in the 3rd Century BC. The army numbers more than 8,000 and its job was to guard the tomb of the emperor once he died. Most are infantry, but there are also carriages, horses, archers, and officers.

The first pit is the only one that is fully excavated so far, and it houses mostly infantry. The second and third pits are mostly unexcavated, but you can see some crumbled soldiers and chariots in the pit. Also in the second and third pits are some officers and chariots that have been reconstructed. We saw all of the pits, but had to rush quite a bit. On the way back to Xian, our bus had to take a detour due to construction, so we made our train by exactly 10 minutes.

Close up and panned out shots of the first pit

Reconstructed Warriors

Sleeper Train

Our train from Xian to Suzhou was 14 hours and it was an overnight train. We shared our cabin with two nice Chinese people and each of us had a bunk. For the most part the train ride was a pleasant experience, but I recommend trying to minimize your time spent in the bathroom

Suzhou

Suzhou was the next destination on our trip. They city dates from the 6th Century BC, but reached its peak during the in the era of the Great Canal, a 1,100 mile canal that connected Beijing to Hangzhou, a city just south of Shanghai. The canals are the longest man-made waterway the world has ever known. While most of the northern portion of the canal has fallen into disrepair, the canals in Suzhou and some of the surrounding towns are still intact. The town is also known for its classical gardens.

Humble Administrator's Garden

The largest and most famous of Suzhou's gardens is the Humble Administrator's Garden. It gets its name from an adviser to the emperor who retired there. Like most of Suzhou's gardens, it contains water, trees, rockeries, and buildings. It was very crowded, but other than that it was quite enjoyable.

Lion Grove Garden

The Lion Grove Garden is famous for its rockeries which look like a lion's head.

Garden of the Master of the Nets

The Garden of the Mater of the Nets was built by a fisherman. It was small, but very beautiful and not at all crowded.

Couple's Retreat Garden

While not as big as the other gardens, this was certainly a pleasant garden to stumble across.

Pan Men

The Pan Men Gate is all that remains of the city walls of Suzhou and it situated in a very scenic area, featuring gardens, pagodas, and arched bridges.

Tiger Hill

Tiger Hill is the burial site of King Helu, who was king of the Wu Dynasty in 500 B.C. The site got its name through a legend, according to which white tiger appeared to guard the tomb of the king. Unfortunately, we did not see any tigers roaming the gardens. Tiger Hill contains several gardens and historic buildings, the most famous of which is Yunyan Pagoda. The pagoda is the East's version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which the Chinese structure predates.

Canals

Many of the canals in Suzhou have been well maintained or restored, so the highlight of any trip to the city is just walking along the canals. While the city is a modern Asian metropolis satellite of a megapolis (Shanghai), there are stretches of the canal that make you forget what century you are living in. Our hostel was located on one of theses stretches. Though coffee shops and bookstores fill many of the historic buildings, the area still retained its quaint charm.

The other canal we explored was one that connected Tiger Hill to a recently restored scenic portion of the canal (below right). The first section of the canal gave us a better glimpse into the lives of ordinary people, who inhabited many of the rustic homes. Many were playing, working, speeding by us on mopeds, or operating make-shift convenience stores out of their homes.
















Our second night in Suzhou, Alexa decided to hire a boat to take us on a romantic canal ride. I don't know what the price tag on this activity is in Venice, but for us it was only $25 for 40 minutes on the canal. Our boatman even serenaded us in Chinese!

Shanghai

The last stop on our trip was Shanghai, a city most of you are familiar with. Shanghai is a futuristic city of 10 million people, so the contrast between it and our other two stops was stark. Shanghai is a relatively new city by Chinese standards. Prior to 1800 is was just a small fishing village. Following the Opium War in the mid 19th Century, Europe carved China up into concessions, or spheres of influence. Thus, out of an influx of foreign cash and quasi-imperial administration, Shanghai was born. Many parts of the city retain a European feel, particularly the Bund and the French Concession.

Shanghai National Museum

The first stop on our trip was the Shanghai National Museum, which features art and artifacts from throughout Chinese history. My favorite exhibit by far was the Chinese landscape paintings. By no means am I an art connoisseur, but I was always captivated by the mountains shrouded in mist depicted by the Chinese. To me, art serves two purposes: to be aesthetically pleasing or to make a coherent political/social commentary (I had zero appreciation for the exhibit of blank placards and the Art Institute of Chicago). The landscape paintings rival some of the most beautiful European art I've seen, despite some of them being older and not as well preserved.

The next best exhibit was the ceramics, full of delicately painted china and clay figurines. I also really liked the jade carving below (right).

They also had an exhibit on the ethnic minorities of China (which is actually an extremely diverse country). Throughout the trip, the communist PR machine was in full gear, churning out propaganda about Tibet. The overarching message was "China is proud of the ethnic minorities in the territories we occupy." That said, I suppose the only difference between the minority art exhibition in Shanghai and a Native American art exhibition in the US is about 100 years of elapsed time. So the exhibition is probably a good thing on the whole.

The Bund

The quintessential Shanghai experience is strolling along the Bund. The Bund is 2-3 blocks of buildings along the Huangpu River, all of which feature various kinds of European architecture. Most of them are banks or serve some type of other commercial purpose, so it's the facades that are the main draw. The Bund also provides excellent views of Pudong, Shanghai's futuristic skyline.

Pudong

After strolling the Bund and braving the Tourist Tunnel (an overpriced rail car surrounded in flashing lights that blares synthesized music) to cross the river, we found ourselves in Pudong. Up until 1990 or so, Pudong was one of the poorest areas in the city, wrought with poverty, prostitution, and organized crime. Around that time it was declared a special financial zone, which opened it up to foreign investment, igniting an economic explosion. We decided to go up in the Shanghai Global Financial Center (built in 2008) which looks down on all of the other skyscapers. After a sci-fi elevator ride, we were at the viewing platform, the highest viewing platform in the world.

We went up around 6:30 so we could snap pictures both in the light and in the dark. Watching the city light up from above is quite an experience.














The tallest buildings in Pudong are the Jinmao Tower and the SWFC that we went up in right next to it. The Jinmao Tower looks like it is straight out of Gotham City.

Old City

The Old City is not a pleasant place to be, save for the Yu Gardens (which were still much more crowded than anything we saw in Suzhou). Old seems like a misnomer. The place is overrun with tourists, American chain restaurants, and hawkers trying to sell you fake Rolex watches or Gucci bags. The teahouse below sells exorbitantly priced tea, but looks pretty cool from the outside. I have to confess, however, that I was an accomplice in this rampant tourist perversion. I just couldn't resist a cheesecake Blizzard...

The French Concession

The nicest, most upscale area of the city is the French Concession. This area was administered by the French during the quasi-colonial time period. It features leafy boulevards, parks, and dresses for prices you'd pay in Paris. One consequence of European occupation was an influx of European ideas. It was in the French Concession that Chinese intellectuals first met to establish the Chinese Communist Party. We visited the site of the first meeting, which is smack dab in the middle of the most bourgeois neighborhood in all of China.

That's all for China. My parents are visiting this week, and I'm about to head to the airport to meet them. Don't know when I'll post next or what it will be about.