Last night in the Jing

This is about two weeks belated since I haven't found good enough internet to upload pictures.

we went to Tairyo for tepanyaki as my last supper before heading off to the SE Asia. Then continued on to NanJie and eventually down the Rabbit hole.

Tairyo was awesome as usual, (its all you can eat all you can drink 170 kuai). Steffen walked straight into the mirror on his way back to the table, then apologized to his reflection for running into it thinking it was a real person....he almost got away with it since I was the only person who saw it happen...but I told everyone.

Fire at Tairyo
Steffen becomes a Panda Bear

After that we moved on to NanJie.. where for some reason people thought it was a good idea to wear their motorcycle helmets inside, and we found a huge pumpkin to play with.

After white rabbit I came home and found that my key was too messed up to open the front door. Not wanting to wake up Nancy, and having no other place to go, I laid down on the welcome mat to sleep there until Gardiner got home..I'm so glad no one got a picture of that. After a little bit I woke up and was cold and panicked thinking that she might not come home till 8am like the day before, and I REALLY wanted to eat the avocado that I knew was lying in the kitchen bread bowl. (This is the avocado that I bought for Nancy and Nick to replace the one I had eaten the week before when I was drunk... so its ridiculous I managed to eat it again, while drunk, before they could get to it... now I need to get them ANOTHER one). I started ringing the doorbell until Nancy came and opened it... poor girl but apparently she was still awake. I then proceeded to make seven layer dip....it was deRicious.

I want to give a shout out to all of the people that made Beijing AWESOME...I could list everyone but it would just take way to long. However I am going to miss some of the highlights:

"When I blow my horn you all take a shot"

Gardiner's "drinking horn"

Che's laugh

Sexy Parties

Ordering in Bitapita

All nighters

Beijing/Qingdao Huangning ni
Beijing Beijing, wo ai Beijing

Random ridiculousnes

Joweling demonstrations

Will not miss:

NanJie hangovers

Anyway, I'm going to miss all of you guys and hopefully I'll see most of you soon...esp you Gardiner and Steffen in Incredible Indiaaaaaa. Everyone else, come to SEATTLE!!!

Liz II

Rahul's Sexy Party 1.5!!

Rahul threw his SEXY PARTY 1.5!!! last night. The highlights:

First: here is a really awesome article my sister linked

We went for drypot beforehand, which is like hotpot in that you get to choose what goes into your meal. Then it is dry fried and seasoned with some of the sichuan peppers that make your mouth go numb. Ours had chicken, eggplant, garlic, ginger, mushrooms, tofu, and some green things.

Then we went to Angel to see DJ Shadow after a long debate over if it was indeed necessary to spend 200 kuai each to see this dude, which we decided in the end it was, me with some reluctance since I'm unemployed.

Once we got to the club billy immediately gamboled off in the opposite direction supposedly to use the ATM, promising to be back soon. 10 minutes...20 minutes....30 minutes.. he finally showed up 40 minutes later with a NEW HAIRCUT... the idiot had fancied a haircut at midnight! WHILE we were waiting for him!!! I also got some chinese guy who lived in Vancouver to give me his two tickets which he hadn't used.... thats 200 kuai a pop or over 40 US for the two!! Go me.

After Angel we carried the party over to Jamies apartment where Billy thought it would be a good idea to put one, but only one, of Gardiner's shoes in the freezer and then try and light her feet on fire with a lighter while she was "sleeping" on the couch. Luckily I saved her.

At 7 we finally called it a night once the sun came up and rolled our sorry company off for dim sum, only getting back to the apt at 8 am.

Kanye Kanye, wo ai Kanye, Kanye Kanye, wo ai Kanye

It was a huge struggle to get excited for Kanye bc we felt like such shit after Halloween, I don't think we left spooked till at least 6 or 7. I did fancy dress again, going as a bumblebee. Our seats were over on the side and the sound quality SUCKED you couldn’t even really tell what song he was singing. It was so bad we were all actually thinking about walking out. Plus, they didn’t have any alcohol there so we were all grumpy about that. About three or four songs in we discovered that the sound quality in the middle of the stadium was infinitely better and we took the party over there. After that the concert was sweet.. especially when they randomly started playing journey in the middle.

We headed over to Nanjie after and spent a few hours being ridiculous there, eventually going to Vicks and having another epic night. Gardiner somehow managed to chip Che's tooth on her ring while "sculpting" his face. 

Che post-chipped tooth...its one of the two front ones on the top

Gangsta

Got home from Vick's at 630 and had no money to pay for the cab so I just ran....I feel really bad about it, at least the cab ride was only 10 Kuai.  Then of course I set my alarm for 830 since I had a train to catch and the ticket was 400 kuai and I really didn’t want to miss it, buuuuut.......

Woke up at noon. Ooooops. So that is why I am still in Beijing. I’m just going to be uber lazy and skip Shangai and fly straight to Burma from here, since I can just do Shangai in the spring when I come back for HONG KONG SEVENS.. which I’m already pretty excited about. Mostly is awesome since I said goodbye to everyone last night..and yet.. I am still here, and showed up at Rickshaw for quiz night.. and then we destroyed the boys at skill darts. HAH

Two cool pics I took at Nanjie when I got really into the manual shutter speed on my camera:

Che looks fuuucking creepy in this pic

Pretttty

Spooked!!

I'm going to go out on a slight limb here and say Halloween MAY have been even more fun than in the US. 

I was a “baseball player” again / really not a costume at all especially since I lost my bat within three seconds of walking in the door.    Everyone’s costumes were ridiculous, but I think Che took the prize by buying a giant teddy bear at the market and pulling out the stuffing and wearing it as a costume – he looked AMAZING.

Che and Billy the never nude

Sarah Palin, Baseball player, There's something about Mary, and Amy Winehouse

We got a really late start to the night so we made MASTER DANCER buy us beers for the cab ride to wodaukou, only problem, he got in the car and none of us had a lighter or anything else to open them with.   Not to be daunted, Che rolled down the window and started asking the cars around us for a lighter.   The Chinese guy in the next car took pity on us and tossed us his - what an awesome moment of kindness not often found in China. 

Awesome bottle opening skills... although thinking about I have no idea why we were opening bottles this way when we had a lighter, since this is after the lighter exchange. 

Before we even got to the party things were getting out of hand – I was already covered in alcohol since Che had slipped at Billy’s apt and had used me to try and stay upright resulting in him tackling me and both of us crashing to the ground and sending flying a few drinks that were on the coffee table, Billy was completely blacked out, we were playing Chinese fire drill between our two cabs on the way to the party, etc.

MD already having way too much fun at Billy's before even going to the party...

I'm sure we scared the crap out of the guy who owned this convenience store.

We went to Spooked, which was a rave party in an old deserted warehouse in the 798 (art district) and it was completely packed to overflowing.  We only managed to get out cab all the way to the front door because Che told the driver I was a cripple. We are all going to hell. 

Woke up at 1PM on Margo’s couch..who knows why I was there and not at Gardiner’s, covered in fake blood, and some real blood on my knee which was twice the size it is usually and really gross looking – I think it may have been a casualty of the time I fell down onstage in front of the entire party… go me.

More pics from the night: 

Theres something about Mary..

This must be after Gardiner found the tube of fake blood...

 there was SO much fake blood everywhere...

No words..MD and the never nude getting down

Party Party Party

Best picture of the night

Beijing, Beijing, Wo Ai Beijing (kind of)

I was rushing around so much last week that I didn’t get a chance to post anything… and then the weekend, (Halloween & Kanye), was such a shitshow that I never even made it out of Jing… even though I’m supposed to be in Shanghai right now and even had a 400 kuai train ticket.

Backing up, I spent all week frantically rushing around packing, shipping things, cleaning etc – all in all extremely boring and not really worth mentioning. Two things though:

1) I made In-N-Out... it was actually very easy, but it didn't taste quite right because I used extra sharp cheddar cheese and so the cheese had too much taste. The sauce tasted pretty good though - I just mixed Thousand Island with sour cream to make it a little less strong.

Animal style fries... Beijing style

2) On Monday I went to the US embassy to VOTE because my absentee ballot had gotten lost somewhere in the Chinese postal system – somehow they are still managing to thwart democracy even if I am not a citizen of the country. The address from the website was utter crap and completely wrong, so I ended up having to call the number to try and find out where the feck it was because at this point I had been wandering around a back alley with donkeys and rubble for a good 45 minutes, wondering why the US would put their embassy in such a shithole. I called the number and got a recorded options: number 1 – to report the death, arrest or kidnapping of a American citizen, and option 2: more information. Option 2 was just more recording and completely worthless, so I decided I would just push 1 and profusely apologize for abusing their system when the person came on the line. Pushed 1, and I got: AN ANSWERING MACHINE!!... good to know that if I’m reporting someone being kidnapped or dread it goes to voicemail.

PS: VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

Below are just some pics of the olympic venues and the forbidden city.. which I finally went to go see - I'm such a bad tourist.

Birds nest...

Water Cube
More water cube...

More birds nest

Pretty weather!!!
Ugly smog...
Forbidden City from the hill at the end..
More Forbidden City..
More..it is very large..

OK next post will be HALLOWEEEEEEEEEEEN

Lanzhou and Xiahe, Day 8-10

hmmm.. something is off with my counting of days because this is actually day 10-13.. so apparently I lost a few days in there somewhere.. sorry about that. 

Arrived in LanZhou in the morning in time to catch the 2 PM bus to XiaHe, about 4 hours drive to the south west of the city.  Found the bus station without incident, but when I went to buy my ticket the woman kept jabbering about something I didn't understand.  Turns out she wanted copies of my passport.   I think my distress at trying to find a place to do this must have read in my face because a chinese girl who was also waiting took pity on me and grabbing me by the elbow forcibly led me outside to look for one.  Three blocks away we found one, where she copied them then dragged me back to the bus station to buy my ticket, all without a word of understanding between the two of us, sometimes I have faith in humanity.   

They put the goats and the bikes on the roof

On the bus I sat next to a nice muslim girl who spoke very good english and went to university in Beijing.  She was planning on studying abroad in Saudi Arabia next year and I gave her my email to stay in touch.  She fed me lots of candy the whole way. 

XiaHe is the second most important monastery town after Lhasa, so if you can't make it to Tibet this is a good alternative.  Until a few weeks ago it was closed, being one of the last to reopen to foreign tourists after the crackdown following the spring protests in Tibet.  At the hight of its glory the monastery housed over 6,000 monks but due to purges during the Cultural Revolution this number was reduced to the roughly 2,000 that live there today.  As you can see from the picture below, the place is massive. 

Lubrang Monastery 

Monks..

Monks getting in taxi... I wondered the whole time if they have to pay but then at the end I saw them exchanging money so I guess that they do. 

Nun from the nunnery above the Tibetan part of the town

Day 11: XiaHe

I tried to find the outer Kora path, which after lots of charades to ask people (most people are Tibetan and their chinese is as bad as mine), I found, the start being concealed behind a nunnery so it was very hard to see.    

I asked this nun if I could take a picture of her and she made this face.  All of the nuns were very nice and let me wander unhindered around their nunnery while I was trying to find the path. 

View of the monastery from the outer Kora. 

Prayer flags on top of a hill above the town

After hiking the outer Kora, which was probably only about 5k I went back into town and watched the pilgrims going around the prayer wheels.     Two tibetan girls from LanZhou broke off from the crowd and befriended me and we hung out for prob 45 minutes the whole time being joined by other pilgrims curious about the foreigner.   There was a great flurry of activity as everyone took pictures of me with their cell phones, etc.   Two chinese guys joined in the fun as well and took a great shot of the whole group that hopefully they will email to me.   

Two tibetan girls that befriended me

Us together...

Extreme close up...

Tibetan women talking after finishing the pilgrimage path

spinning the prayer wheels on the pilgrimage path 

After about an hour I extricated myself from the now large crowd and went to get some eats.  Pretty much every restaurant in the town was closed because it was the low season, but I found one that was open and tried to order momo: tibetan boiled dumplings.   Instead I somehow got a giant loaf of bread and after questioning the cook he insisted that momo and mian bao (bread) where the same, which they most definitely are not.  I realized I wasn't getting momo so I just went into the kitchen and pointed at some noodles, which turned out to be awesome.    While I was eating an old man sat down across from me and just stared and smiled at me while slurping his noodles.   He was with his granddaughter, but she was too afraid to sit with me because I am scary.  

After lunch I bought a teapot which turned out to be the envy of all of China it seems - even policemen directing traffic stopped to examine it and ask me how much I paid, and at the post office today when I was mailing it home the lady took it out and showed it to everyone in the office.   After my shopping spree I went to the internet cafe to try and catch up on emails and tell my parents I was not dead since last I had told them I was in Pakistan.   Most of the cliental were adolescent monks who were all either blasting things on Halo or looking at pictures of Jessica Alba in lingerie. It was very strange... I thought monks were peaceful and celibate... but I guess they are human too, and anyway, at least they have good taste, Jessica Alba is fucking hot. 

Day 12: Xiahe -> LanZhou

The bus for LanZhou left at 630 in the morning, so I woke up at 6 and tried to get out of the hostel but, much to my chagrin, that I was locked inside.    No amount of banging seemed to wake the owner up so I stared thinking of alternate ideas for escape MacGyver style.  After a good deal of running around on rooftops looking for a way down I found that the basement door was just fastened with a chain that I could easily undo. FREEDOM.  I made the bus with only two minutes to spare.    

All of the things that you can't do in XiaHe: Play trumpet or light cars on fire - I guess you can't go Matt